Not Ever
by That.Other.Boleyn.Girl
Summary: Sasuke Uchiha is the typical sadistic, rich, have-it-all bastard - but one night, when he dives off a bridge to save Naruto Uzumaki from a suicide attempt, his world tilts off its axis. SasuNaru
1. Ophelia

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Characterisation leans heavily on **_**Naruto**_**; plot and writing style leans heavily on Colin Falconer's **_**Anastasia**_**; themes and stuff come from **_**Hamlet**_**, **_**Memoirs of a Geisha**_**, **_**The Glass Menagerie, Romeo and Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire **_**and **_**Moulin Rouge**_**. Please review!**

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_**Not Ever**_

_A Naruto FanFiction_

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_To be, or not to be: that is the question._

(Hamlet)

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**One: Ophelia**

Naruto

You know how, when you're young and the prospect of it seems so far away, you always wonder what it would feel like?

To die, I mean.

I used to think about it all the time. Not because I was unhappy – because at that time, I wasn't – but because it seemed like something from a fairytale, something far away that no-one knew about or understood. When you're young, five years old, such mystery is irresistible. At least it was for me. I used to lie on my bed or under the clouds, stare at the sky and think, what would it feel like? Where would I go?

No-one ever seemed to know. And no-one ever seemed keen enough to want to find out, either.

I used to plan it out, too, my own death. I wasn't morbid – I wouldn't put it that way – but when you're childish, and bored, and sheltered and cosseted and distanced from pain: it's natural, to think curiously about things you have no experience of. It's like how sometimes, rich people feel the strange need to prod into the lives of poor people, just to see what it would feel like not to have hot food to eat and a bed to sleep in for a night. Death wasn't scary to me back then: nothing was, ghost-stories and the like aside: and death was different to ghost-stories, because death was real in the way that Lego and Playstation were real, and therefore made sense somehow.

I used to envision myself as some great knight, riding forth on a white stallion with sword and shield, vanquished at long last by a fire-breathing dragon after an epic battle; or perhaps a great explorer setting off to charter new worlds, standing at the prow of a tall ship and vowing never to desert, even as the waves roiled summit-high and the lightning flashed. Those were my light-headed, empty-minded dreams of childish heroism, where death was not really death but a way of penning one's name into the legend books. Painless, easy, guaranteed. My name would be remembered forever.

All those elaborate plans – all those days of dreaming, warm and loved, viewing death through a haze of intrigue and glory and romance. Perhaps I'd watched too much TV. I guess I'll never know. At any rate, when Father died a year later, the haze disappeared like dew in the sun.

Death became real. Real in the way that Lego never could be. No longer far away – oh no, Death came so close that I could picture it every morning when I woke up, burning like smoke behind my eyelids. No grand heroism for my Father: just a white cross, Minato Uzumaki, plastic roses because we couldn't afford real ones every day. A tiny square in the ground, like so many others, the man that had been so alive and his smile so vivid now a fistful of grey ash, indistinguishable to the dust my Mother vacuumed off the carpets every week.

Death.

I suppose that was what really brought me down from the clouds, changed me. It was as if I'd never been the wide-eyed boy lying on his back on the front lawn, staring at the skies and wondering at Heaven. Just one year, and it felt a lifetime away.

And then Mother went too.

It came as a numb shock at first – _so soon?_ – but they told me it had been suicide, she'd driven her car off the bridge into the river. There had been eyewitnesses: they'd seen her, Kushina Uzumaki, her red hair tied up in the bun it always was, her hands on the wheel and her eyes calm, cutting sharply to the right as if she was merely stepping off the curb. They'd dived in to try and save her but she'd already drowned. When they pulled her out onto the road her hand was clutching the cross around her neck.

I wondered for a long time after that. I wondered and I fell apart. My life was splitting at the seams and I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, seem to be able to hold it together. It was like diving: once you take that step off the block, you fall, and nothing can stop you until you hit the water. Only with me, I hadn't taken a step off anything. My parents had made the decision without me, and pitched me off the blocks all the same. I don't blame them – they tried, in their own way, to give me what they couldn't have – but I suppose they fell short of it, failed themselves more than they failed me.

Maybe Mum thought she'd help me more by dying, and leaving me her life insurance, than by staying alive. It didn't make sense to me – it still doesn't – but Dad's death had changed her, made her brittle, like glass: beautiful, cold, fragile. And if you smash glass hard enough, you can almost pretend the shards are diamond.

I suppose that was what started me in my new job: the emptiness. You know that feeling, when it's as if air is slowly expanding in your chest until it pushes against your ribs? As if you've just suddenly gone hollow, gone numb?

That was me. I decided that I didn't care about myself anymore. That year, I froze.

Like plunging into the Arctic Sea: at the start you struggle, you fight, clawing up at the surface. You want to breathe. But after a while you stop, because you are so cold, and because you are so tired, and because it doesn't seem to matter how hard you fight, the coldness won't go away. You forget what it was like to be warm, and you give up. You let go. And then the light closes over your head and you don't need to fight anymore, because everything is over, and you don't even need to breathe.

No more light.

No more warmth.

No more pain.

That night, when I was eighteen and I'd had my job for a year or so, I came home from the hospital knowing that I wanted it to end. It's hard to explain how, one day, you just know that you don't want to live anymore: that it would just be easier to stop. That you can't – won't – stay. That night, I had money in my pockets and I thought, I don't want to do this anymore, stand around in the streets waiting to be bought, to be taken home and slept with and paid. I was tired of clawing at a surface I couldn't see, a light I would never reach.

So I went to the bridge.

People say it's hard to decide if you want to die or not: they're wrong. It's not hard. It's as easy as falling. I climbed up onto the railing with the moonlight striking down and the doctor's letter in my pocket and I stared at the water, the black water, for a long time. I looked up at the stars and I thought, If I die, maybe I'll go to Heaven and be closer to those stars. Maybe I can reach them. And then I remembered how dirty I was, and how pure they were, and I knew that I would never reach them.

Not now. Not ever.

So I took out the money. And I threw the notes away – into the water, watched them drift, watched them sink.

And I thought, There goes my sin. Now I am clean again. Now I am pure.

And then I climbed up, my feet on the railing and my hands on the high girders, and I let myself hang there. I looked down and the starlight sparkled on the surface of the water. I could feel my Mother's silver cross against my neck and I thought to God, Catch me. And then I let go and the wind carried me down like a leaf, and for a moment – a brilliant, beautiful, breathless moment – I thought that I could fly.

* * *

Sasuke

I went to the bridge that night because I wondered if anyone would miss me.

I still think about it, now, wondering what things might have been like if I hadn't been a selfish jerk and gone to the bridge. Whether I would ever have changed. Probably not. I would have gone on being the iceblock that I was, Sasuke Uchiha with a fortune in the bank account and nothing much else, another rich kid blundering his father's company, driving a Porsche around the block. People measured me by the number of credit cards I had. The labels on the clothes I wore. The money in my account, numbers to me but livelihoods to them, the only thing that kept food on their tables.

I realised that night that I was just a tree, a young tree with leaves and branches and fruit, and the only people that hovered around me were there for the things I could give them, the things they could harvest away. And I knew that once everything ran out – once I was old and the fruit didn't taste so sweet anymore – they would leave me with nothing, cut me down and sell my wood and pull out my roots, and then they would move on.

I hated them that night.

So I guess that was what made me get into my Porsche, roll up the windows, drive out to the bridge. I thought, I'll show them. What will they do once I'm gone? Once I burn the tree, slash it, leave them nothing, not even the wood? I was like some vampire, furious and hating the light, but jealous enough of those that loved it to want to tear the light away so they could feel my pain as well.

I wanted to die because I wanted others to die with me. Sink my teeth into their throats, not because I needed their blood, but because I wanted to watch the suffering in their eyes.

Because I knew that no-one would care, otherwise. This way, they would miss me because, by dying, I had ruined their lives.

When I reached the bridge, it was late and the moon was out. I shut off my car and rolled down the windows to feel the breeze. It was good – I felt hatred, and it was good to feel something. I got out of the car and left it there, and after a while, I threw my keys into the river.

And I thought, There goes everything. There goes the false compliments, the fawning, the lies. There goes their sin.

And then I hoisted myself up onto the railing, watched the cold water. There were white things floating on the surface, like stars. I stared at them. They were banknotes.

I looked to the left and there, twenty metres or so, someone else was standing on the bridge railing. I watched as he spread his arms, a shimmering silver bird about to take flight. And as he let go, I knew what he was doing, and suddenly I thought: No. I cannot let you jump. I cannot let you die.

Not now. Not ever.

And as he fell, the moonlight in his hair and the black water down below, I did the most stupid thing possible.

I let go, and jumped in after him.

* * *

Naruto

I used to wonder a lot about what my Mother would have felt, what would have gone through her mind in those last few moments, when she was waiting for it to end.

Maybe she thought about Dad, and his smile, the way it lit up his face all the way to his eyes. Dad could call out the Sun with that smile. And then he would say, Kushi, let's go out tonight. Let's take Naruto out for dinner. And we'd all laugh, and fuss about getting ready, and no-one would say anything about the empty pantry, or how we couldn't pay the rent next week, or how Council had sent us a letter taking away our electricity because we hadn't paid the bills for a year.

Those sorts of things didn't seem to matter when Dad was there.

Without Dad, those sorts of things became nightmares. The neighbours would pound on our windows and tell us to mow our lawn, the grass was growing into their garden. Kids would come in the middle of the night and doodle with spray cans on our fence, not scared to write their names, because we couldn't do anything about it anyway. Drunks would pass out on our front step and Mum would go out to them, give them some water.

Mum.

When I threw myself in the river that night, Mum and Dad were all I could think about. I saw their faces in the sky and as the water sucked me under I thought, I'll never see them again. They've gone up, to Heaven. And I'm going down.

But for some reason, I didn't mind.

The water closed over my head and for a moment I reached out my fingers, touched the surface of the air. The air rippled like mercury. I smiled.

And then I went under, and still the mercury was there, and I could see the moon out beyond it. And I thought, This is what it feels like. This is what it feels like to die. I finally know, now. And I stretched out again to touch the mercury – just one more time, just once – but the light was too far away, I couldn't reach it.

I thought of Mum and Dad again. And I whispered to the water, I'm coming. My fingers went to the cross around my neck. And when I closed my eyes again, I could still see their faces, and they were smiling at me.

* * *

Sasuke

He went down fast, like a stone, disappearing beneath the surface. I'd splayed myself out as much as possible, intending to float, but realised halfway down that that would be extremely stupid. How do you find anything when you're floating? Like fishing for squid on the surface in a rowboat. He would sink, I knew that much, if only because I knew he'd want to sink.

I hadn't thought much about what I was doing, and the moment I hit the water I realised that. I'd kept my eyes open but I didn't remember where he'd fallen. I began to wallow around, yelling nonsense, trying to keep my head above the current. He didn't reply, but I suppose I'd never expected him to. I was wasting time. I heaved a breath and pulled myself under.

The world is strange underwater.

I'd never thought about it until that night, but it's terrifyingly peaceful under the surface. You drift, and if you don't need to breathe, you just keep drifting. The water is cold at first but it gets warmer, or maybe your body gets colder, either way. Everything is suspended, even time. It's beautiful.

Everything is beautiful in the dark.

I pushed down lower, still searching. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't nothing. I'd thought that, somehow, I would find him the first time round. I didn't.

I went up, heaved another breath. The stars winked at me and I pulled myself down again.

The second time was easier, if only because I was more serious. I found him somewhere about four metres down out of sheer luck, because the moonlight didn't reach that far, and the only reason I'd found him at all was because he had a chain around his neck. In the water, the silver was like a tiny sliver of moon, catching the nonexistent light and flashing it back like a beacon.

I caught him under the arms and he struggled. I didn't let go. My lungs needed air and I kicked up, him flailing against me, trying to break away. We fought for a while, in the strange awkward way you can manage only when underwater, and then he gave up.

Just like that, he gave up and went limp.

For some reason, that startled me. I thought of glass, delicate glass, and the next time I caught him under the arms I was almost afraid that I would break him.

* * *

Naruto

When I felt the arms around me, I thought, No. I squeezed my eyes shut and I thought, No. No. And I fought, because I couldn't see Mum's face, and I couldn't see Dad's face, I couldn't see anything but darkness.

And I felt robbed, somehow. Cheated. Like I had already paid for something, only to have it taken away from me at the last moment. And I felt the cross against my palm and I thought, God has abandoned me. He didn't catch me. He didn't let me die.

For the first time that night, I felt like crying.

And then I looked up and I saw the face that the arms belonged to, with the moon shining behind it, and I knew I was wrong. Maybe it was the lack of air, maybe it was the water, maybe it was the coldness, I don't know. Maybe it was all of them at once. Because when I saw that face, I thought, God has given me an angel. He's given me an angel, and I'm going up to Heaven.

So I stopped fighting. For the second time that night, I let go. I let go, and I closed my eyes, and I let that angel pull me back towards the surface, and back towards the light.

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**A/N: Okay, love, hate, undecided? Review, please. This Fic is weird, admittedly, but to be honest with you I wouldn't have it any other way. It feels right. I hope you liked.**

**PS. Don't be fooled: Naruto will _not_ be overtly... girly. Sorry. He is a male, he was born male, and I intend to keep it that way. :P**


	2. Current

**A/N: Ah, reviews, you are my air. Thank-you to xNeTsUx, kalbus2002, DesperateLoveKoi, Tulpia, Ann, and Nejihyugasfangirl whom reviewed! Please please please review for this Chappie too, everyone! Love you all!**

**Oh, and by the way, I'm not using quotation marks. Direct speech is all in italics (except quotes from poems, etc. at the beginning of the Chapter). Also, the style of this Fic reminds me a little of **_**Crash**_** – different characters' POVs, intermeshing into one storyline. I know, it's weird, but just bear with me... I'm experimenting...**

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**Two: Current**

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_How strange these silver chains that bind,_

_The moonlight before and the shadows behind;_

_This pact, this path, this darkening sin,_

_Two tears in a river, two leaves in the wind..._

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Sasuke

My father always said to me, don't drift. Never drift, Sasuke. A strong man will not follow a path: he will make his own, carve it out like water through stone.

I suppose the irony didn't occur to him when Itachi left two years later, supposedly to follow that advice to the letter. To carve his path: but not with water, with blood.

What goes around comes around, I guess.

When I dragged Naruto Uzumaki onto the banks of the Brisbane River I couldn't help but think of that. Not Itachi – I didn't care about him – but drifting, the notion of drifting, it's so tempting when you're in the water and you can't breathe, much less think. Every breath is a battle: an uphill one, grasping up to the surface with your lungs screaming and your legs like lead, breaking free like a demented whale, heaving one gasping breath, and then down again to start the entire thing all over. It's like high-jump, except some retard keeps raising the bar every time and if you miss – if you somehow fall short – you don't just crash, you die. You drift away with the current, and you drift out of this world.

Add to the mix a teenager's romantic idiocy in jumping off a bridge to save someone else, and a semi-conscious, anonymous bundle occupying both arms – you get the idea. It was a miracle I got out of the river full stop.

By the time I reached the riverbank, I had no idea where I was. The moon was still high but my eyes had blurred, I was seeing the world through frosted glass. I choked and hacked the water from my lungs. I was cold, I'd saved someone's life, and I wanted to throw up.

I didn't look at his face – strangely enough, I didn't care – just spread him out on the grass, his skin cool, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. He was young; my age, seventeen or so, nineteen at most. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear shouting and sirens.

An empty and unlocked Porsche had been found on a bridge.

Normally people didn't care: you jumped, you died, it was your problem. But when a Porsche is involved, that means wealth, a possible reward.

The owner might be thankful if you save his life. Call an ambulance.

I dragged myself up and stared at him lying on the ground. I thought, I should see if he's breathing. See if he's alive.

But I didn't.

I looked up at the moon and I thought, this is crazy. I'm crazy. I didn't know why I'd done what I had, why I'd pitched myself into the river so recklessly to save someone who'd obviously not wanted to be saved. It didn't make sense, even to myself. At that moment, I knew that I needed to walk away. I needed to get away.

So I did. I left him there, spread on the grass as if someone had crucified him, and I trailed my way back to the bridge. The scent of the river was in the air, wet and cold and salty. My sopping clothes caught on reeds.

When I finally reached my car, a policeman was there, two paramedics looking jaded and sceptical.

I told them, _There's a boy in the bushes. I don't know if he's alive._

I looked at the Porsche, and then I remembered that I'd tossed away my keys.

The paramedics left, the policeman took out a clipboard. I could feel his eyes on me: he thought I was a straggler, some druggie or other who'd tried to hijack a Porsche perhaps, tried to throw someone off the bridge.

He looked at me. _Name_, he said.

So I told him. _Sasuke Uchiha._

I watched his face change. Shock, disbelief, uncertainty, hesitant acceptance. The emotions flickered across his face like images on a projector screen.

_Uchiha?_ he said. Just to be sure.

I didn't answer. My hair had fallen into my eyes and I watched him through the dripping strands.

_Identification, sir?_

So I was a sir now. An unlocked Porsche and my last name did wonders. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet. Louis Vouitton, and thoroughly soaked. Big deal. I held out my license.

And I thought, It's coming. It's coming.

It came.

It's as obvious as a light bulb switching on: when someone crosses the line, when someone realises suddenly that the beggar they'd just contemptuously handed a ten-pound note to is, in fact, Bill Gates in disguise. It had always amused me, watching that change in others: I'd seen it so often that I came to expect it, as much as I expected the sun to rise or the tide to ebb. It was spiteful, it was cruel, it was egotistic: but it was something that I did, something that I loved and hated at the same time.

_Thank-you, sir._ He handed my license back, his eyes astonished but curious. He tapped the clipboard. _I have to file a report on your version of events tonight. What happened, you know._

So I told him. The bridge, the figure standing poised on the railing, the fall. I told him in less than thirty seconds and then I turned away. The water dripped silver from my hair and clothes.

_And the Porsche, sir? I presume that's yours?_

I could see it in his eyes: a hunger, a want. I smiled at it. Sasuke Uchiha was cruel.

I said to him, _Yes. That Porsche is mine. You can have it._ And then I walked away, down the bridge in the wash of moonlight, and the water trailed silver behind me like a chain.

* * *

Naruto

I left the hospital the next morning, after receiving several dubious glances from the receptionists. Was I alright, did I want a counsellor, where did I live?

I answered yes, no, Inala, and then I walked out the door.

You know when you first wake up in the morning, that strange half-awake feeling you have just before you open your eyes? That moment when you know you're awake, and you know you're not? I drifted around for an entire morning like that, my eyes wide but my head elsewhere, my world skewed on a strange axis. I had thrown myself into the river, I had been dragged up again, I had woken up in hospital.

Perhaps I'd died. Then again, perhaps I hadn't. The latter seemed more probable somehow.

It was how I made my way back to the taxi club, my head spinning, my feet moving with a mind of their own. I didn't think about how I'd thrown away all my money, I didn't think at all. The door of the club was open and I went inside.

The scents: musk, sweat, alcohol, clinging to the walls like wallpaper. The darkness stifled and I had to wait, adjust myself after the light outside. Laughter; music, mindless, blaring, low; and then different sounds, more guttural, fitting to the establishment. People came here to get lost in the dark. People came here to forget the light.

When I'd first worked here, the first week, I'd found it hard to stand; every time I heard those noises I'd want to scream, to be sick.

But things you cannot change, you get used to. Blows bruise, no matter when they're inflicted; but after a while, if they're inflicted regularly, you begin to absorb the pain. You drift with the current. It's how we live – we get up, we eat, we drink, we sleep; my profession, my work, relies on how well you can absorb. If you absorb it well, you make money, you grit your teeth and you keep going. If you don't absorb...

... you break.

I took a deep breath, still half in the doorway. Cigarette smoke stung the inside of my nostrils. I shook my head; I was back where I'd started, it was as if last night had not happened at all.

But it had. I'd seen my Mother, my Father; I'd seen an angel. Someone had pulled me out. I didn't know the name, but I knew the face, and as I stood there that morning I clenched my fists and told myself, I'll fight. Yesterday was a mistake. Today, I fight.

Kiba met me on the stairs.

He squinted. _Naruto?_ he said, as if he wasn't sure. _That you?_

I said, _No. Not me. Obviously._ And then I tried to get past him, but he stopped me, threw out an arm.

_Where were you last night?_

_Not here,_ I said, and ducked under. He swore at me, grabbed my shirt, pulled me back.

_You fuckwit_, he hissed. _They were looking for you all night. You better have diamonds in that shirt of yours, or they'll kick your ass into the middle of next week._

I thought of the banknotes, curling into the river. In the moonlight, they'd looked like diamonds.

_You listening to me, dickhead?_

I grinned at him. I actually grinned. Maybe that was a testament as to how clueless I was, how clueless my little pitch into the river had made me. My mind was thinking about as straight as a paperclip.

_Oh fuck you,_ I said. _You fuss like a woman. Make any money last night?_

_I landed a drunk one. They always tip well when they can't walk in a straight line._ His eyes roamed my face, he was worried in that fierce, protective way of his. _You're about to get bashed, you know._

_Yeah, I know._

I took his elbow, pushed it out of the way before jogging up the stairs. He started after me for a bit, changed his mind, let it go. As I disappeared around the corner he tossed up a _Boss's waiting for you in the top room._

I didn't turn around. I knew what it meant, I wasn't stupid. When the Boss is waiting – it's not to invite you to tea and muffins.

_Isn't he always?_ I yelled back at Kiba before slamming my door.

* * *

Kiba

I knew it, that morning; fuck, I'd known it all week. Naruto might have been a screwed-up piece of shit, but he was a transparent piece of shit all the same. I could read him as easily as I could _Playboy_ or _Penthouse_.

It'd started on Monday. I was at the bar, no clients around 'cause it was noon-ish, I was knocking back a whisky. The fire hadn't even settled in my stomach yet and he said to me, he said, _I've never been to Paris._ Just like that. _I've never been to Paris._

Little piece of shit.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and I said to him, _Naruto, don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare. Don't you even think that way._ And he looked at me, and he knew what I meant.

Maybe it was 'cause he was alone. I could read him but it didn't mean that I understood what I saw. Anyone can open a book in Latin but not everyone knows what the fuck it says. I had a sister, I had someone to lean on: she was scraping by, doing the same trade in a different city, saving for my Uni fees. Fucking Uni fees. As if I was Uni material.

But Naruto had no-one. A leaf in the wind, Hana once said – poetic, but poetry was never much good for anything outside of fairytales and Hollywood. It wasn't much good for Naruto, at any rate. Not that he wasn't strong: fuck, Naruto was one of the strongest people I knew.

He'd been through a crapload. But even the strongest rope will fray if you use it long enough.

So that night, when he went missing from the club, only one thought went through my head: The fucker's done a runner. I didn't really blame him for that – you can't blame anyone for running from a taxi club the first chance they get – but I blamed him for his stupidity. Naruto was never one for thinking.

Two reasons: first, if you're gonna pull a runner, at least pull it on a night the Boss had not set aside for fee-collecting: 'cause if you're not there on that night, you're gonna be missed, and not in a nice cuddly way either.

Second reason: he didn't tell me.

And it hurt.

Fuck it, I was the closest thing he had to a friend, and he didn't breathe a fucking word!

All that night, even when I had a drunk lawyer from Missouri on top of me unbuttoning my pants, all I could think was, Fuck you, Naruto. Fuck you. I hope you've drowned yourself in a river somewhere. Good fucking riddance, you no-good piece of shit.

And then he came back.

I'd been waiting for him – somehow I'd hoped that he'd come back, that he'd poke his head back in through that taxi club door and say, _Haha, fooled you, Kiba. You thought I'd run? Well, you thought wrong. Here I am, and I didn't tell you I was going last night because I wasn't going at all. Sucked in._

But it wasn't that way.

He came in and somehow, even in the dim light, I could see his eyes. They were different, and I squinted. Maybe that look had always been there, I'd just never seen it: but I realised it that morning, realised that I'd sensed it all along. I'd known it all along, all fucking week.

He'd tried to throw himself into the river.

So I didn't get angry with him – fuck! I wanted so bad to just grab him by the shoulders and shake, shake some fucking sense into him, but I didn't, I couldn't. I'll admit it, I was fucking scared that morning.

As if he was walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon: I wanted so badly to just reach out and grab him to safety, but I couldn't, just in case I startled him into falling off.

When the Boss was through with him, I saw his bloody and bruised face and I thought, Fuck this. I need to get Naruto out of here. I need to get him out, get him away.

And then I saw that newspaper.

* * *

Sakura

When Sasuke came home that night, alone and soaking wet and without his car, I thought, You idiot. Don't tell me you've lost your car again. Sasuke has a bizarre habit of losing his cars.

He came in through the door with his clothes damp and smelling of mud. I waited until he'd taken off his shoes before planting myself in front of him, hands on hips.

And I told myself, I won't give in tonight. I won't.

_Where were you?_ I demanded, letting him see my glare. _The office called twice._

_Driving_, he said, his back to me.

_Without a car?_

_Don't be stupid._

_Then where is it?_

_Not here._

I thought his first action would be to take a shower, but Sasuke has always managed to surprise me. That night was no exception. He went straight into the kitchen and cranked up the espresso machine. I followed him like a sulking dog.

_Where were you?_ I said again, leaning in the doorway and crossing my arms. He'd left an hour and a half ago without any sort of explanation, and I'd been worried out of my guts. _Sasuke, talk to me. You never talk to me._

_You seemed fine with that arrangement before tonight._

I knew what he meant, and it had the potency of a physical blow. Oh, Sasuke could be cruel. Beautiful, hard, and cruel. He wasn't satisfied sticking in the knife – no, Sasuke Uchiha had to twist the knife as well. It wasn't the first time he'd done this to me, and I knew it sure as Hell wasn't going to be the last.

_Don't treat me like that, Sasuke,_ I bit out from between my teeth. _I'm not a common whore._

He looked up at that, and his eyes were completely unfeeling, not a scrap of emotion in their icy depths.

_Could've fooled me,_ he said.

I wanted to hit him then. I wanted to reach out across the kitchen bench, wrench that coffee cup from his hand, and slap him across the face. But I didn't. I was Sakura Haruno, he was Sasuke Uchiha, and I had no right to touch him.

Perhaps he was right: perhaps I was nothing more than a common whore, an opportunistic gold-digger out to grab all she could reach. For the first few months, I'd told myself that I was just there for the money: for the champagne, the fast cars, the Tiffany diamonds. But I was fooling no-one. I was an actress, but like all actresses, the talent was one-sided: I could only conjure, I could not banish.

False emotions came to me like second nature, but real ones – I couldn't hide them any more than I could fake them.

I wanted Sasuke.

People have a tendency to judge, and I was used to them judging me; but Sasuke, I wanted Sasuke so badly. I wanted him so much that it made my heart ache. It was blind, it was the love of a girl who didn't know what was good for her, because Sasuke was a notorious womaniser and I'd told myself that I would stay away from him, that his beautiful dark eyes would never touch me.

But they did, and it was like moonlight striking ice: so perfect, so beautiful, as irresistible as gravity. All the world's beauty and happiness, caught in the promise of that single shard of nacreous light.

And I'd spent the past year reaching for that, grasping for that moonlight. I needed him, as much as I needed air. When he asked me to marry him, I thought, I've lost. I cannot say no. He'd trapped me, caged me, and I'd helped him weave the cage myself; so hopeless, so helpless, that even though I knew his heart didn't belong to me – that I was only convenient, picked because I just so happened to be at the right place at the right time – I didn't care.

I had caught a drop of moonlight in my hands, and I'd thought, This is enough. Even the slightest sliver of light is better than the dark.

But what is moonlight? Electromagnetic waves, particles, nothing. You reach out your hands and the moment you think that light is yours, it fragments, it breaks, it slips through your fingers.

It leaves you with nothing, with just air, as if it had never been.

* * *

Sasuke

That morning, I stayed in bed for an extra hour, not because I was sleeping but because I was staring at the ceiling.

And I thought, Why don't I feel anything?

Last night hadn't quite sunk in yet, but at any rate, I felt nothing. I didn't feel good about what I'd done, but I didn't feel bad either. Just nothing. I didn't know whether the boy I'd dragged from the water was still alive or not and, to be perfectly honest, I didn't give a goddamn. I just didn't care. And it terrified me.

It made me wonder why – why I'd done it in the first place, jumped into a river to save a life I didn't know. It sounded stupid even as I thought it, as if Sasuke Uchiha had never done it: some idiot, some high-school kid puffed up with heroics and childish bravery had done it instead, and I'd just happened to be there when it happened.

When I went down to breakfast, my hair still wet from my shower, Sakura was sitting at the breakfast table, her pink hair out around her shoulders. A newspaper was splayed out in front of her and she was reading it to avoid talking to me.

I went and made myself a coffee.

When I returned from the kitchen she was watching me, her eyes two emerald chips set in a face of marble. The light from the open French windows spilled out over her shoulders, drenching her hair and pooling shadows at her collarbone.

And she said, _You're in the newspaper._

I sat down and looked at her. The coffee warmed my hands. And I said to her, _So?_

For a moment her lips trembled, the emeralds wavered like smoke. And I thought to myself, I've made her cry. I raised the cup to my lips.

_Why didn't you tell me?_ she whispered, brokenly. _You could've died! Why didn't you say anything?_

_I didn't feel I needed to._

_I'm your wife, Sasuke. Surely – _

– _I owe you an explanation?_ I set the cup back down. Still I felt nothing, and the look in her eyes – hopelessness, betrayal, hurt – didn't change that. _I don't owe you anything, Sakura. You know that._

_I know,_ she burst out, the marble cracking. _I know, I owe you everything, my career, my lifestyle – everything – but Sasuke, you married me, surely you must feel something for me – _

_I don't,_ I said.

The smoke died in her eyes. I lifted my cup again, saw my gaze reflected in the dark liquid, and even I could see the cruelty in those eyes. I was killing her, softly, and it was as easy as blowing out a candle.

_Why did you marry me, Sasuke?_

And I thought, One last stroke of the knife. One final thread to cut.

_Because you made it so easy,_ I said. And I smiled.

* * *

Naruto

Kiba's plan was exceptional: exceptional, in that it was completely and utterly stupid. When he told me, I couldn't believe my ears. I wanted to grab that newspaper, roll it up, and deck him over the head with it.

I told him, _No way. I'm not going to do that, you idiot. You can take your stupid newspaper and stick it – _

_The guy's loaded,_ he'd said then, and he picked up the newspaper and waved it at me. Front page news: LOCAL MILLIONAIRE DIVES INTO RIVER TO SAVE LIFE. There was a photo, too – dark impassive eyes, dark hair, pale skin. That face I'd seen in the water, pulling me from the darkness, was now peering out coolly from the front page of the Courier Mail.

_He's loaded_, Kiba said again. _Fucking loaded, man. You landed yourself a big one this time, Naruto, buddy. A fucking big one._

_I'm not going to do it,_ I said firmly. _Kiba, he saved my life. I'm not going to turn up on his doorstep and – _

_Exactly, he saved your life!_ The rough brown eyes laughed, and for a moment he almost convinced me. _The least you can do to show your everlasting gratitude is to thank him, right? Personally._

_That's not how you put it before._

_Naruto, stop being a goddamned moraliser. We got enough of them as it is, and the world's still going to the dogs. This is your chance, Naruto, your only chance – _

_To do what?_ I bit back, annoyed. Only Kiba would've thought of something this stupid, this... cruel. _To do what, Kiba? Make myself more of a whore than I am now? I sold my body before this, Kiba, and it nearly killed me. I'm not about to sell my life too._

He grabbed my shoulders. And shook me. He shook me, and shook me, and I was so shocked that it was five seconds at least before I pushed him off.

_What the fuck?_ I snapped.

_Use your head, Naruto, you damn fucker,_ he hissed, and suddenly I could see the raw desperation in his eyes. _Are you happy here? You like this kinda life? You enjoy fat old men grunting and sweating on top of you? Is that it, Naruto? That what you want?_

_Shut up,_ I whispered. I thought, It's not his fault. He doesn't understand.

_Don't hide it from me, Naruto. Don't hide. Fuck it, I've never hidden anything from you in my entire life. But this – I've seen you, Naruto. I know you. You want to go to Paris – well, here's your first-class ticket out of here, Naruto, right here on the front of this newspaper, and all you have to do is take it – _

_I can't,_ I said. _I can't._

_Yes you can!_ His fingers found my chin, forced my eyes up to meet his mahogany ones, rough even in kindness. _You will, Naruto. You will. I'm not gonna stand around and watch you again. I'm not gonna let you get so desperate, desperate enough to throw yourself off another bridge. Because – _

He stopped, but I knew the words that had been coming. _Because next time, someone might not be there to pull you out._ I knew the words, but they didn't materialise, didn't meet the air.

Maybe it was the emotion in his eyes. Maybe – maybe I understood, then, that Kiba wanted this for me. That he wanted to save me. I caved in, I agreed, but – like a shadow – something gnawed at the back of my mind, something that I couldn't grasp but was there all the same. It was there, even as Kiba pulled me into a bear-hug, even as he told me, in that certain way of his that made you want to believe him, that –

_It will be alright. It'll work out, Naruto. I promise._

And still the shadow was there, and still I could not grasp it.

The next day, when I was standing on Sasuke Uchiha's pristine white doorstep and raising a hand to ring his pristine white doorbell – I understood it. That shadow, that feeling: that I was being carried away, that I was a leaf that had landed in a river, and was floating away – far, far away – from everything that I knew.

Floating away with the current; and somehow, I did not feel clean.

* * *

_Have nothing to do with things that belong to the darkness; instead, bring them out to the light._

(Ephesians, 5:11)

* * *

**A/N: Naruto and Sasuke next Chapter... together, I mean. As in, second-meeting-ish. Well, this Chapter is long, and I hope you'll reward me... with reviews? Please? Pretty please?**

**Hehe, Sasuke is one sadistic bastard, is he not? Well. I hoped you liked Sakura, it took me a while to sketch out her character in my mind. How to not make her too... fan-girly. I wanted to give her some depth, and she'll be fleshed out – as well as the other major characters – in the next Chapter. I'm glad you like the POV-thing: I love writing first person, but just having one protagonist is difficult if you have a complex plot, so multiple POVs was the way to go...**

**Oh, and I'm working on updates for Definitely Maybe and Black Rose – new readers, please check them out! Update schedule on my profile page.**

**(Oh, and on the side – **_**finally**_** dived into **_**Death Note**_**, after all this time! Friends have been nagging me to get into it all year, and I finally have.**

**AND I AM ADDICTED.**

**UGGGGGHHHHH!! So addictive!! Ugh. Like, can't stop myself from reading/watching/everything-ing **_**Death Note**_**. I haven't read Naruto Shippuden yet, but I've read **_**Death Note**_**. Go figure.)**

**Sorry about that completely irrelevant **_**Death Note**_** outburst... couldn't help myself. Review, please! Arigato!**


	3. Collide

**A/N: Weird chapter coming up. Hope you don't mind. Thank-you to dragontwister, Vohx, Rhionae, Jay-Jay51, - and GossipgalMishi whom reviewed. **

**Please don't forget to review this Chappie!**

* * *

**Three: Collide**

0-0-0

_I have no joy of this contract tonight:_

_It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden;_

_Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be_

_Ere one can say 'It lightens'._

(Romeo and Juliet)

0-0-0

Sasuke

Shikamaru picked up on the second ring. His lazy drawl crawled down the line like some exquisite insect, only managing to morph into a word at the last moment.

_What?_

_I need a new car,_ I said, not elaborating. _I don't care what it is. Have it ready by the time I get there._

And I hung up.

Downstairs, Sakura was talking to someone at the door. I didn't think too much of it because we always had some nosy journalists at our door out to get me, or some nosy paparazzi out to get her. They never did anything too extreme, because it was common knowledge that the Uchiha Corporation had a formidable bank of top-notch lawyers just waiting in the wings, but that didn't make them any less annoying. I put my mobile down on the desk and stood up to stretch, my suit bunching at the shoulders.

I heard Sakura on the stairs, her footfalls muffled by the shag-pile carpet, and I thought – strangely – of a funeral procession. She knocked on the door.

_Sasuke?_

_What,_ I said, sitting back down. I had some forms to sign and I picked them up, shuffled through them, bored.

_There's someone at the door for you._

There was something in the tone of her voice but I couldn't quite place it through the closed door.

_Name?_ I said. I picked up my pen.

A slight hesitation. _Naruto Uzumaki_, she said finally.

The name meant nothing to me whatsoever, and I sat for a while staring listlessly at the lid of my pen. Probably some hotshot journalist or other, sniping for an interview. At any rate, I wasn't in the mood for pointless questions. I eased the pen lid off and half-heartedly attacked the first form in the pile.

_Sasuke?_

_If he wants an interview tell him I'm in a meeting,_ I said, not looking up. _Take his number or something and Shikamaru will get back to him._

Another pause, longer this time. Sakura was weighing her words.

_He... He doesn't want an interview, Sasuke._

_Then what does he want?_ I must have sounded annoyed, because her voice hardened and she pushed against the locked door.

_Can I talk to you, Sasuke?_

_You're talking to me right now._

_I meant properly._

_I'm busy._

_Sasuke._

_Put him through Shikamaru. I'm going past the office later today to pick up the car._

She pushed again and I looked up to see the door handle working up and down, but not turning past the lock. I went back to my forms.

_Sasuke, open the door. Please._

I waited for a few minutes to see if she would give up or not, but her shadow stayed resolutely under the doorframe. I pushed myself up out of the chair and padded silently to the door, unlocked it.

Sakura's eyes were furious, blazing. Her mouth was drawn into a single white line, and I could see how determined she was not to cry. Her hair was wet – a shower, I guessed – and her white dressing-gown had slipped off one shoulder, revealing smooth alabaster skin.

_What,_ I said, keeping my eyes on her face.

She snapped.

_You didn't tell me he was a whore!_ she hissed, grabbing the front of my dress shirt and twisting as if she hoped to strangle me by it.

I raised an eyebrow. I didn't have a clue what she was on about, but the vulnerability in her eyes was too hard to resist.

_Whether he's a whore or not is none of your business,_ I said.

_Then what __**is**__ my business?_ She shook me, but I didn't say anything, savoured her pain silently like a connoisseur. _What's my business, Sasuke? Don't I deserve to know? Why do you always have to shut me __**out**__ – _

I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her. Just like that: a single kiss, short, in the middle of her lips and in the middle of her sentence. When I pulled away she opened her mouth but the words wouldn't come out. The power I had over her was intoxicating; I could see it reflected in her eyes, the pain and need and desperation. I could break her if I wanted to, and we both knew it.

_I hate you,_ she said finally.

I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, feeling a smirk form on my lips. _Fine by me._

And then I slipped past her, silent, and headed down towards the living room. I could feel her eyes on my back all the way down the stairs.

* * *

Naruto

I was out of place. Miserably. The manicured lawns, the sprawling mansions, the gardeners that paused in their hedge-trimming to stare at me as I walked past – I felt like a severed head being dragged through the Taj Mahal. Everywhere I looked, there were landscaped gardens and expensive cars – I counted two Mercedes and a Rolls Royce parked within the garage of Number Five. Number Nine had a white beribboned poodle that yipped at me as I passed their gate. A fifty-dollar note was lying in Number Eleven's front garden bed like a piece of scrap paper, furled amongst the tulips.

I picked it up and tucked it into my pocket. When I stood up again, a five-year-old with a toy helicopter was staring at me from across the road. I felt my cheeks burn as if I'd stolen something.

I didn't belong here.

So when I stood on the front step of Number Thirteen, my fingers resting on the doorbell, I thought, What am I doing. This is insane. He's going to stare at me, nod politely, accept my apology with obvious disgust and then kick me out.

I nearly turned around and went home, then. Drag myself back to the taxi club, show Kiba my fifty dollars, say something like _There you are. A tip of fifty bucks, courtesy of Sasuke Uchiha. Thank-you, come again._

And then I remembered the desperation in Kiba's eyes and I took a deep breath, pressed the doorbell.

It was probably only minutes, but it felt like hours. I'd almost turned away – in relief – when the door opened; and there, in the doorway, stood the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Clichéd, yes, but utterly and devastatingly true.

Her face was familiar: I'd seen her in a magazine or other somewhere, she was an actress. The name didn't come to me, but I didn't mind. I was struck dumb. She was towelling her hair and the pink strands fell over her shoulder in damp waves. She was just wearing a white dressing-gown – I'd caught her unprepared – and I could smell the scent of her skin. It was fresh and reminded me of the soft petals of a cherry blossom in spring.

I suppose it was strange that, after all that time sleeping with men, I ended up falling for Sakura Haruno. Working at a taxi club seriously messes you up. After all those men – and I'd had all types, retired doctors and truckies and businessmen and even a Catholic priest, once – perhaps I was tired of everyone wanting something from me, wanting something that I didn't want to give them. Maybe deep inside I needed something that I could control, something that I could say I truthfully wanted.

Sakura Haruno was beautiful and at that moment, I could not think of a single thing that I wanted more than her.

Our eyes met and she stopped towelling.

I stared at her. And she stared at me.

_Who are you?_ she said. There was a hint of fear in her voice and it was warranted, because I'd been beaten up only yesterday at the taxi club and my face probably looked like something out of _Frankenstein._

_My name is Naruto Uzumaki,_ I told her, half in a daze. Her voice slipped through my brain like silk. _I'm looking for Sasuke Uchiha, please._

Her eyes sharpened and she pulled the towel away, swinging her hair so that it ran in a pink stream down her back. She put her hand on her hip and leaned on the door.

_Why do you want to see him? He's not available for an interview at the moment, he's in a meeting._

In a meeting. Well. That pretty much screwed up all of mine – or rather, Kiba's – plans. But I suppose we should have seen it coming: did we really expect to just swan into Sasuke Uchiha's life, grab all the cash within reach, and then swan back out again?

No. I didn't think so.

_If he's in a meeting then I'll come back later_, I told her. She had jasmine perfume on and I couldn't think straight. _Uh, I'll drop over next – _

_Are you with a newspaper?_

I blinked. _No,_ I said, without thinking.

_With the Corporation?_

_No,_ I said again. And in my mind I thought, What Corporation?

_How do you know my husband?_

That single word bounced around my skull like an echo: husband, husband, husband... The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life was married to Sasuke Uchiha. It must have been my karma – God was finally getting his laughs somewhere up there.

_Uh, he..._ I cleared my throat. _He saved my life the other day. I just came to say thank-you._

_Saved your life?_

_I jumped off a bridge and he pulled me out,_ I told her sheepishly, laughing a little. It felt stupid saying the words, because they didn't belong any more to this suburb and its cosseted world than I did. _So, yeah, saved my life._

She looked at me then. Hard, as if she was preparing me for a dissection. I shrank a little, painfully aware of my own lack of status, not sure what to say. And then, I caught something in her bright green eyes – a teardrop perhaps, but it could've just been my imagination, because as far as I could tell there was nothing at all to cry about –

_Come in,_ she said suddenly, and left the door. I stared after her, wide-eyed, and didn't move.

And I thought, Did she just ask me to...?

_Come in,_ she said again, less patiently. _I'll call Sasuke for you. He's upstairs._

_I don't want to interrupt him if he's in a meet– _

_He's not,_ she said. _Close the door behind you._

I did so, slightly bewildered. The house was huge – ceilings as high as a cathedral, the decor modern and surprisingly neutral. A chandelier with flashing crystals dangling off its gold spires hung an imposing behemoth right above my head, and I thought to myself that if it dropped, it would be large enough to take out the entire foyer.

The floors beneath me were cool white marble. I raised a foot. I still had my shoes on. I peeled them off, eyes wide and taking in the wallpaper, the glass, the Italian furniture and the ceramic vases. The air felt different – I could almost smell the wealth, and if I was a snake and flicked out a tongue I'd probably be able to taste it, too. A giant gilt mirror hung over the marble staircase, and a red carpet ran up its white steps like a crimson ribbon.

I could see myself in the silver glass, and I looked overwhelmed.

_I'm in the kitchen,_ she called. Her voice sounded distant. _Would you like some coffee?_

I trailed into the kitchen like a piece of driftwood in a storm. _Thank-you_, I said.

I stood in silence as she made the coffee. Her back was to me and a corner of her dressing-gown had slipped off, presenting me with a coy view of her left shoulder.

I shook my head in a vain attempt to clear it.

_So you were the one, hm?_ She turned back around. She was trying to be casual but her eyes wouldn't let her: they were too sharp, too sad. _He didn't tell me whom he saved. The newspaper didn't either._

I gave a small laugh, feeling awkward.

_Where are you from?_

_I was born in France,_ I said, _but my parents moved here when I was two._

_No, I mean, where do you live._

I went red. _Uh, Inala._

_Inala._ She stared at me. _Where do you work?_

_The Blue Note,_ I said, without thinking. _It's a taxi club in Fortitude Valley._

And then I thought, Naruto, you idiot. You idiot. You fucking idiot.

Her eyes widened, narrowed, steeled. For a moment she looked like she wanted to say something, but she turned abruptly and went back to fixing the coffee. I, for my part, went back to miserably staring at her shoulder and wishing that I had been born mute. Save myself some dignity.

_Here you go._ She set the coffee down, didn't look at me. _Sit down, make yourself comfortable. I'll go call Sasuke for you._

I opened my mouth to thank her, but she'd already disappeared.

* * *

Sasuke

He wasn't in the living room so I tried the kitchen, partly in annoyance and partly to get some coffee. I found him standing by the kitchen bench looking lost, staring at a cup of coffee in front of him.

And I recognized him.

Not his face – I didn't remember his face – bit his silhouette, his figure. I remembered him spread out on the wet grass, the moon in his hair. His presence had an aura of sorts, the kind that femme fatales spray onto their wrists as perfume. Don't get me wrong – there was nothing in him that was flirtatious, nothing sultry in the way he stood or in the way he looked up as I entered – but there was something magnetically fragile, the same glass-like fragility I'd sensed that night pulling him from the water. The way his hands rested against the marble bench-top, the way his blonde hair fell forward into his eyes: it was as if he was from another world, an underwater, distant world that I didn't understand, and never would. With the sunlight tinting his hair he looked achingly alone, but I felt as if that was how it was supposed to be: like a reflection in a dark lake, touch it and it flickers away like smoke.

He looked at me. His eyes were the saddest I'd ever seen, as if he was bleeding to death right behind those eyes and trying to hide it.

I found with some surprise that I'd stopped breathing.

He held out his hand and smiled at me. The smile didn't reach his eyes, got lost somewhere in transit, so that the ocean-blue orbs still retained their soft, velvet melancholy. He'd been beaten up but the wounds didn't seem so pronounced in the mellow light, rather added to his hypnotizing distance.

I stared at him.

_Naruto Uzumaki,_ he said. _Thank-you for saving my life._

I didn't take the hand, concentrated on breathing. I sat down at the kitchen table, crossed my arms, tried to gather my thoughts, decided to trek on familiar territory.

_What do you want,_ I said.

He blinked. _Sorry?_

_What do you want,_ I repeated. The words came easily now, poison slipping effortlessly past my lips. _You didn't come here just to thank me for screwing up your suicide attempt, I presume._

Something flickered in his eyes: surprise, anger, confusion. But none of those emotions surfaced fully, stayed buried behind the glass.

_You didn't screw it up,_ he said. _I'm glad you pulled me out again. I wasn't thinking that night._

_It wasn't an act of charity. I pulled you out because I didn't want anyone to think I'd pushed you in._

A slight pause. Our eyes met and we both held it, defiant, each unable to reach beyond our familiar spheres and comprehend the other. We were different – I felt it nowhere as acutely as in that first meeting – so different; two worlds away, standing on two sides of a giant abyss that yawned into the centre of the earth.

_You're a bastard,_ he said finally.

I smiled at him. _Glad we understand each other. Now, what did you want?_

_Nothing._

_I doubt it._

_What makes you think I'd want something from you?_

_I know your type._

He crossed his arms. A scowl formed on his face. _Oh? And what type is that, Mr Sasuke Uchiha?_

_The gold-digging type._ I watched as the scowl deepened into offense, his blue eyes digging twin daggers into mine. _You came here for money, didn't you?_

_No,_ he bit out. _I didn't._

_Just a cup of coffee, then? Well. _I paused, relishing the conflict in his eyes. _My wife told me about your... situation. How much were you expecting to get out of me?_

_You're a bastard_, he said again.

_How much?_

_I don't want your money._

I remembered the banknotes floating down the river, darting with the current.

_Maybe you don't,_ I said. _But someone else does, and that's why you're here. Correct?_

His hands clenched. He turned away from me, abruptly, moved towards the window. His shadow shifted in the sunlight. I watched him, the sun breaking a halo around his hair, studied the way his neck tapered smoothly into his jacket. So removed – as if he wasn't there in my kitchen at all, this was but a ghost of him, a hollowed-out shell that moved and spoke but was essentially empty, devoid of emotion –

_Don't pretend you know who I am,_ he said quietly.

I laughed then, and surprised myself.

_You're a whore,_ I said flatly. _That's all my wife has told me, that's all I know at the moment, and that's all I have to judge you on._

His eyes flashed like twin mirrors. _You have no right to judge me_, he hissed.

_Exactly. That's why I do it._

He looked at me, then, and it was like lightning – sudden, unexpected, and utterly breathtaking. That feeling, as if someone has just taken a spear and run you through with it – or like shattering glass, so hypnotic in its beauty that you do not notice the jagged splinters lodged in your heart, you do not care, you cradle the pain like an infant and you breathe it.

That single gaze of his was so full of hatred that I couldn't breathe at all.

And when he looked away I thought, I will break him. I will shatter that glass again, breathe its beauty again. Oh, I wanted it – that raw emotion that I could not evoke in myself, could not conjure beyond poor shadowy imitations of feeling. I was hollow, having everything but having nothing, empty, as if someone had scooped me out with a spoon. I fed on the emotions that others handed to me. I fed on their pain, on their hatred. I fed on it and I distilled it until it became so potent it crushed me, both nourishing and destroying at the same time: a strange but somehow enchanting paradox.

Because I knew – I knew it more than anyone, the terrible beauty of self-destruction.

So I stood. And when he looked at me again – this time in surprise – I felt alive, so scintillatingly alive. The cruelty seeped into my blood like water, ran along my arms. I pulled out my wallet and found five hundred-dollar bills.

And with his eyes still on me I moved closer, the money between my fingers.

_I don't want it,_ he said then.

But I didn't care.

I backed him against the window. He fell quiet, his eyes still fixed unwavering on me, mine still on his, both holding out, a silent war, neither giving way, both content to let the hatred burn like hell-fire between us –

I leaned forward until my cheek brushed his, my lips level with his ear.

He didn't move.

_So tell me, Naruto Uzumaki,_ I whispered. _How much were you planning to make out of me?_

I reached forward and hooked a finger through the belt loop of his jeans. My own voice seemed to echo in the tiny distance between us.

_One hundred? Two hundred?_

I pulled him forward suddenly, crushing our hips together.

_Three?_

_Bastard,_ he whispered back.

I smiled, pressed my lips softly to his cheek. There was a bruise there, fresh, purpling against his cheekbone. His skin was as cool as marble.

He still didn't move.

_Four hundred?_ I said.

I was walking a tightrope, I knew it. Right on the edge of the blade. He was holding himself in, I could sense the emotions roiling beneath his skin, a brewing storm. The air between us seemed to be suspended, a tension so solid that I felt as if a sudden movement would snap it, explode –

I kissed him.

It wasn't really a kiss – more an assertion of power, of domination. Short, sudden, and dark as poison, a kiss in nothing but name.

When I pulled away, still staring at his mouth, I realised that he'd closed his eyes.

_Five hundred,_ I breathed then, my hands still on his hips. _Five hundred dollars._

_Get off me,_ he whispered. And then, louder: _Get off me._ He shoved me, hard, his eyes open now and smouldering with fury, the glass shattered beyond repair.

We stared at each other, the moment hanging between us like torn silk.

I tossed the money onto the floor and the notes travelled drunkenly down, sinking through the air like multiple spoons descending in honey.

_I'll show myself out,_ he said.

I watched him as he left. The sunlight flickered over him, dappling his hair, slanting gold over his cheeks. He paused at the kitchen doorway, his shadow frozen on the marble tiles, and I waited.

He turned and the sunlight flashed in those eyes.

Twin mirrors.

_Your wife deserves someone better,_ he said.

I said nothing, let my victorious smirk speak for itself. When the front door slammed I reached for the coffee, and the memory of his hatred burned a sweet, liquid fire through my veins.

* * *

Sakura

My husband was kissing another man.

I moved away from the kitchen doorway, silently, left him to it. The house was quiet. I looked up and there was the gilt mirror hanging above the marble staircase, another Sakura Haruno staring back at me.

I realised to my surprise that she was crying.

I moved forward, touched the smooth silver glass. And then I sat down on the stairs, sat and stared, and the red carpet trailed crimson down the steps like blood.

* * *

_Those lake-blue eyes_

_I almost fear to look in them_

_Lest I, like Narcissus, see my own image there_

_And pine away with love_

* * *

**A/N: Short Chapter, but I hope you guys managed to stay awake through it. Sorry if it was a bit wordy. You have no idea how difficult it was writing that last bit of Sasuke-Naruto exchange – god, I spent like an entire week on it. I wanted the sexual tension to be there, but I didn't want it too obvious because Sasuke and Naruto haven't really realised that it's 'sexual tension' per se, they just think they hate each other.**

**...But we know that's not true, right? .**

**Maah, I feel sorry for Sakura. Poor girl.**

**(And don't worry, there isn't going to be much/any NaruSaku or SasuSaku. This is SasuNaru. Mainly. Perhaps with a bit of KibaHina, ShikaTema, and – I haven't determined yet – KakaIru.)**

**Mmm, Sasuke is such a bastard, I just love it. Hope you guys love him too.**

**ANOTHER THING: _dragontwister_ asked in his/her review what Naruto and Sasuke's ages are: they are 19 and 20 respectively! Sorry I didn't mention it before! Meep!**

**Oh, and by the way, it's been a while since I read/watched **_**Naruto**_**, so some of the characters might be a little OOC. I'm desperately trying to keep them real, but if you guys think a particular situation or aspect of a character isn't realistic, let me know, and I'll try my best to fix it.**

**Keep the reviews coming! Love youse! :D**


	4. Desire

**A/N: SasuNaru of sorts in this Chapter. Thank-you to rosekyo, Hispanic Tenshi, -, KokoxKonoha, Kai's kitty, and Belladonna-Isabella, whom took the time to give me fantastic, helpful reviews! **

**...And shame on those whom did not review... :shakes fist:**

**Please don't forget to review this time, and I'll forgive you! . **

**Oh, and one quick thing: this chapter contains RAPE/YAOI. IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED, THE RATING ON THIS STORY IS NOW M. If you don't like, don't read – or, better still, read and be converted. (Hopefully.) I would love your feedback, so don't go away too quickly! **

* * *

**Four: Desire**

0-0-0

_What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire! – the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down the other..._

(A Streetcar Named Desire)

0-0-0

Naruto

Desire is a strange thing.

It's the single notion that rules us all, every breath, every word, every shifting movement of our limbs. Desire – what chains us to the earth, makes us human. Desire to eat. Desire to sleep. Desire to make money. Desire to make love.

When Sasuke Uchiha kissed me that morning that was all I could think of.

Desire.

Brutal, unforgiving, unforgettable, destructive.

_Desire_...

...and I lived by it.

* * *

Sasuke

It must be the human condition, something innate within us all, something irresistible that none of us can deny. At first I thought that there was something seriously wrong with me.

But I suppose we humans always want what we cannot have.

Like the moon, for example. Who can explain Man's fixed obsession with the moon, a lump of rock in the sky? All those poems and songs written about it, all that time spent developing the technology to reach it – the moon has a pull on us as great as it has on the tides. Why? Because it is so detached: so alone and remote and unfathomable, so completely removed from everything we understand. We cannot have it, and so we want it.

Ophelia wanted Hamlet's love; Romeo wanted Juliet.

And I wanted Naruto.

He'd refused me; I couldn't have him; so I wanted him.

It didn't make sense, like an equation that just didn't balance. I grappled with the notion for a long time, a week even, my mind in agonising disarray. Shikamaru thought I was going crazy, and I suppose I was. I tried to distract myself, even slept with Sakura twice, and her nails left burning lashes down my back. I signed forms, went to the office, picked up my car. I got booked for speeding an hour later and threw my ticket out.

I told myself I didn't care. And through it all I was haunted by ocean-blue eyes, the purple of a bruise on an ice-cold cheek.

Desire.

Or was it something else?

By the second week, I couldn't stand it anymore. The moon's pull on me was just too great. Desire or not? Well, there was only one way to find out, and I took it.

* * *

Naruto

I was sitting in front of the mirror, buttoning my shirt. The room smelled of stale sweat and some obscure version of tobacco. Windows open. Fifty-five on the table in five dollar bills, but in the semi-darkness they looked like tens. I had the lights down – I could deal with myself better that way – and I was inspecting the damage in my glassy reflection.

It wasn't so bad. I had some bite-marks, two vampire-like imprints on the side of my neck. I rubbed it gingerly. My hand was a bit worse off, the guy had been a bashed of sorts – he'd tried it on me, an experimental jab in the hand with a lit cigarette. I'd come back at him with a wine bottle and he'd left it at that.

Bastard. Kiba had warned me against picking up truckies but when they're waving money in your face, it's hard to say no.

The single light bulb stuttered and went out with a whine. Stupid power grid. Some drunk idiot downstairs fiddling with the switches. I finished with my shirt, fingers fumbling in the darkness, and patted blindly around the table for the money. Fifty-five dollars.

Fifty-five dollars, and you could buy me for half an hour.

I was glad it was dark, so that I would not have to face myself in the mirror.

I don't think people truly understand how it feels, doing what we do. Oh, we get the sympathy card sometimes – the oh-my-god-you-poor-victims-of-poverty-and-the-Australian-judicial-system, those ladies in their white charity suits and their Christ-blood lipstick, condescension as polished as their high-heeled shoes.

We get the disgust card too, the people who look at us and they don't see us – I don't know what they see, but they don't see _us_. They purse their lips, they look out of the windows of their Hilton rooms and their Masaratis and they shake their heads, ask each other what the world is coming to.

The world is rotting, they say.

I agree with them. The world is rotting, but not because of people like me.

And then there are the people that look right through us. Right through us, as if we're cellophane. They don't serve us at the shop counters, they pretend we aren't there, they pretend we're part of the furniture – _Oh, Naruto Uzumaki, yes he makes a great coffee table. Ignore him a while and he'll go away._

As if we're semi-human, as if we don't feel, as if we chose this.

And every time, I want to scream at them, I want to hit their carefully-blanked faces and ask them how they think anyone could ever freely choose this.

Because when people pay for a prostitute, they pay for a body. They pay for someone to lie there underneath them, someone to act out a dream-world for them. We aren't human in that context.

We are like sparks, tiny sparks of impermanent magic – we seduce you, we make you believe you are wanted, and then you bring your own fantasies and you live them with us. We are puppets, jerking along to whatever overture you wish us to.

Whatever you desire.

And when it ends, you pay us: that is all you ever give us, money. Little sheafs of paper, for a brief spark of magic. But magic doesn't come that easily – no. You give money; we give a lot more. Because every time we sleep with someone –

We give away a little piece of ourselves.

And so when I found the fifty-five dollars I stared at the notes, the five-dollar notes, ghostly in the darkness. My hand still throbbed from his cigarette.

I was still staring at the money when Sasuke Uchiha came in. I didn't hear him – and he was probably there for a while, watching me as I tucked the money into my pocket and finished dressing. It was only when I actually turned to go out the door that I noticed him, dark and lean in the doorway, silent as a panther.

I stopped.

He stared back at me coolly, a strange detachment in his eyes. I could only just make out his face, the high cheekbones and the delicate, aristocratic curve of his jaw, in the semi-darkness. His lips were curled in a non-committal smirk and I remembered the feel of those lips on my cheek.

He shifted but didn't move from his position in the doorway.

_Naruto,_ he said.

I closed my eyes briefly. I wasn't surprised at his presence here, of all places, because I couldn't find it within me to be surprised at anything any more. Him calling me by my first name – I felt that I should've been indignant, but was too tired to carry the emotion out.

_What do you want,_ I said.

_What makes you think I'd want anything from you?_

_I know your type._

A sheen of dark amusement tinted his voice. _And what type is that, Mr Naruto Uzumaki?_

I didn't reply, went to the window. The night air was fresh and cool, and carried the scents of the city with it: the spice of Italy from the restaurant below, the bitter exhaust smoke, the crispness of decaying leaves and approaching rain. The street a silver-brushed ribbon, gleaming ebony in the wan moonlight. The lonely notes of a saxophone, rising up like a human wail from one of the clubs.

_Please leave,_ I said to him.

_Leave?_

_Please._ The moonlight struck my face like a physical blow. _Please leave._

He was suddenly there, right there, behind me. The wind grew harder, stinging my eyes. I felt my shirt ballooning out at the shoulders, filling with the empty air.

Empty, always so empty...

_I'm a customer,_ he said.

I couldn't decipher the tone of his voice. It brushed over my skin, there and not there, a ghost.

_I don't want your money._

_Why?_

Fury in his words, black and bitter, like unsweetened coffee.

_I don't want it,_ I said again.

_Then what do you want?_

I turned to him then, and his eyes were two pinpricks of blackened winter, the smudge of charcoal left too long in the fire.

_I don't want anything,_ I said.

He took a step back as if I'd struck him.

_What?_

_I don't want anything from you._

_I don't believe you._

_Then don't._

His eyes flared. _If you're playing games with me – _

_Why would I play games with you?_ I could see the moonlight falling across his figure and it caught on the buckle of his belt, a fallen star. _You saved my life and I'm grateful. Let's just leave it at that. There's no need to take it any further._

He folded his arms and I suddenly realised there were two of him: one watching me, his eyes sharp and suspicious; the other in the mirror, a silhouette of black and blue and silver, all ice and graceful lines. And I thought, That one is like me. The Sasuke in that mirror – different, but similar somehow.

Somehow.

_My wife said you were born in Paris._

The change in topic was like a pinch, a flick of water in the face.

_Yes. That's true._

He tilted his head as if he didn't know what to make of me. My answer had puzzled him somehow.

_I don't understand you,_ he said.

* * *

Sasuke

There he was, in the moonlight, the way I'd first seen him: his skin shining pearl-like and tinted blue by the night sky. And I remembered the kiss two weeks ago and I thought, He is different tonight.

Things change at night. In the daytime, with the morning sun and the rebellious flash of clear sky, the shadows are easy to see. You move and they are there on the ground, as unshakable as death. You can't forget, in the daytime, and right and wrong are as clearly defined as fire and ice.

But at night – shadows aren't so easy to see. Rather, you sense them, know that they are there but they seem separate somehow, because everything is dark and horizons become blurred. You can reach out to touch them – but is it real? Is it a shadow?

Or is the darkness your brush your fingers against – is it just you, the darkness of yourself?

You can't tell. At night-time, right becomes indistinct from wrong. You can hide from the world and pretend, and the shadows will not be there to haunt you.

Perhaps that was why I felt so unsure that night, standing in Naruto Uzumaki's run-down little room, as boxed-in as a wolf in a dog kennel. I'd been so confident, so sure of myself that morning, so convinced I held supremacy.

But night is different from morning. In the daytime, my money meant everything to the world. In the night-time, money meant nothing, mock-diamonds tossed into a blackened river.

Naruto belonged to the night, and I could not read him.

And when I felt his gaze on me, those eerily remote eyes, I floundered. I lost my grip on everything. I drowned.

_I don't understand you,_ I said.

To my surprise he smiled at that. Small, sweet, and sad.

_I know._

And I couldn't help myself then – I was drawn to him, something invisible that tugged me closer, spider-skein latched onto my heart. It was gentle and I let it lull me, let it drain the cruelty from my blood.

I moved forward to touch him. He shied away.

_Did you see a doctor about that bruise?_ I asked him in the awkward silence that followed.

_What bruise?_

_On your cheek._

I moved forward again and again he shied off, a deer in headlights.

_It's gone now,_ he said.

_I don't believe you._

_Then don't._

_Let me see. Properly._

_No._

He was pinned against the window – memories, anyone? – and he couldn't move, not unless he wanted to jump out backwards. I moved closer one last time, curious and impossibly enchanted by him, a kite tossed by an invisible wind: and when he met my eyes he seemed resigned.

_What do you want,_ he said.

_We've had this conversation before,_ I told him softly. _Twice._

_You didn't answer me the first time._

_Neither did you,_ I reminded him.

He said nothing at that so I reached out and brushed his cheek with the backs of my fingers. Cool, so cool, his skin – not cold but cool, as chilled as stone.

He turned away.

No fighting – no fury – no hatred. Just a close of the blue-black eyes, a turning of the cheek. And there he was, distant again, as unapproachable as the moon.

And something snapped.

It was so real that it was almost audible. That pressure between us – like a thread of silk stretched out too far, straining just on the brink. I hadn't realized it before but it had been there, a buzz beneath my skin, and when it snapped like ice punctured through with a pick everything that had been focused on that single strand of silk snapped with it.

My reason. My reserve. My gentleness – so unreal, so out of character, so alien. My suspended fascination, a frozen pendulum.

My desire.

Like a river smashing its banks...

I grabbed him hard about the shoulders and forced my mouth onto his. He gave a single gasp of surprise – what are you doing, why, why – and it tasted bittersweet, a drop of venom on the tongue. When I reeled back my head was spinning and my stomach had that wild knot in it, the kind you get when a bridge suddenly gives under your feet.

His body was warm against mine, the warmth somehow seeping past his marble-cool skin.

_Please leave, _he said, the third time that night.

_No._

The fury was back, the gentle spell broken. I kissed him again. No mercy – fierce, dark, unexplainably and inconsolably angry – and the desire writhed in me like a wakened snake, flicking tongue a sting of poison, purest poison –

And his words echoed again: _I don't want anything, I don't want anything..._

I crushed myself against him and my hands held him there. Twisted; felt the bruise form under my fingers. He was breathless and I could taste it. He pushed feebly against my chest but I wouldn't let him go, no, he was mine, I'd pulled him from the ice-water that night, his life was mine and I was claiming it. He moved left and I blocked left; he moved right and I blocked right; and all the while, my mouth on his, my teeth on his lips, stifling him, stopping his air.

And I thought, This is the most beautiful way to kill someone. This is the way.

* * *

_Now that I know what I'm without_

_You can't just leave me_

_Breathe into me and make me real_

_Bring me to life..._

(Evanescence: _Wake Me Up Inside_)

* * *

Naruto

He wouldn't let me breathe.

I could feel the world slipping away from me, dark fringes brushing the edges of my vision like an encroaching mould. I'd felt this before, the slow drift from reality, the slow sinking into oblivion.

I'd felt it that night in the river, with the mercury above and the darkness below.

Funny, how life does that. You think you've left something behind but it comes back, like a lost dog. It always comes back, and you can run all you like, but your shadow will always be there beneath you, and you cannot pull a Peter Pan moment and shake it off.

The lack of air clawed to my brain and I didn't fight it. It felt good, actually.

I was just settling into that oblivion, that sweet relief, when he pulled away.

And all at once my body kicked in – I spluttered, gasped, heaved my breaths. And then I collapsed, a moment of weakness and despair, fell against him.

He shoved me back roughly and began undoing the buttons of my shirt.

_Please don't,_ I whispered. _Please._

He paused, his eyes leaping with a dark flame, reached into his pocket and wrenched out the thick wads of currency. Furled hundreds, like sacred scrolls. He threw them at me and went back to my shirt.

_I don't want it,_ I said then. It could've meant anything.

_Me neither._

_Then stop._

_I can't._

I tried to decipher that but his lips painted hot swirls of sensation over my neck, his fingers twisting and tearing at my buttons. A rip – impatient, he wasn't unique in that – and the fabric fell away, like shedding a second skin. His mouth found my throat and his desire was a mist, dark, passionate, impenetrable. Something rose unidentified in my throat and I choked it from my system. The cold night air bit into my bare shoulders.

_Don't,_ I tried again, but the conviction was fading. Drops of dew evaporating in the sun. _Stop, no, I don't want – _

_Shut up._ A vicious tug on my belt buckle. _Just shut up._

_Please._

He paused. Made as if to kiss me again – and a panic reared in me, a terror that he'd stifle me again, steal away my air. I writhed away.

_No. No. No._

His fingers found my chin, held me still. I could see my raw desperation reflected in his eyes.

_I've paid,_ he hissed.

_I don't care,_ I hissed back.

And then he shoved me away from the window with such force that I tripped on the edge of the bed, landed in a disorientated heap on the mattress. He followed, the moon swinging behind his hair. He didn't bother with his shirt. I scrambled away from him, got tangled in the sheets, and he grabbed me by the hips and yanked me back.

I met his eyes. Heard the swift grate of leather as he removed his belt, unzipped his jeans.

_Don't, Sasuke. Don't do this._

_I've paid,_ he said again.

And then the wild kiss – oh God, it swept me away, singed the inside of my mouth with its brazen intensity. Overwhelming. I couldn't breathe again, couldn't fight. Helpless beneath him, my entire body quivering with that heightened sensation that comes with fear, his fingertips dusting over my chest, my stomach, lower.

I jerked away from the kiss as his hand closed around me, cold against my own heat. The protests came naturally and I fought, pushing at his shoulders.

_Don't, don't, don't – _

_Stop moving._ And then, as if to convince himself: _I've paid._

No warning – just like that, he pushed himself into me.

The sound tore itself from between my teeth, an animal scream that streaked blood-red through the air and left harsh, shredded fragments of itself coated over my tongue. The pain – no words for it, none at all – nothing that can illustrate its truth for those who have not felt it. It's so potent that it's molten, yet somehow crystallized into a million flash-white pinpricks that burn hissing into the flesh like a brand. He moved and it was like sandpaper against every nerve of my body, tearing, ripping, slashing, my entire self seized up with that momentous pain. I wanted to scream again, I wanted to gauge out his eyes, I wanted to die.

I wasn't a stranger to rape, taxi clubs tended to take care of those sorts of things. But each time – each and every time, without fail... It's like dying again and again, dragged up to the surface only to be dragged back down, each time deeper and darker than the last, your body breaking like glass...

_Naruto,_ he hissed, and I perversely rejoiced at the pain that tempered his eyes.

These sorts of things are never easy on anyone.

_I hate you,_ I gritted out. My fingers clenched the sheets, bone-white in the moonlight.

_It – hurts – _

_No shit, you – fucking – didn't stretch – me – _

_I didn't – know – _

_Get out, get out __**now**__ – _

_No – _

_Fuck you!_ I yelled at him, the pain snapping rapid-fire jolts of electricity up and down my spine. _Fuck you, fuck you, fuck – _

He kissed me again and this time his lips were tense, his own pain measured in the set of his mouth. I snarled and bit him hard, the blood slipping between our tongues. He snarled back angrily and stabbed his hips down. Unfair revenge. A half-scream peaked at my lips but I throttled it furiously, the hatred in me ferocious and crackling darkly like some caged beast. His breath caught too – painful for both of us, a loveless, almost pleasure-less union – and I laughed with a sudden spike of malice.

_Not what you expected, Uchiha?_ I trickled out darkly from between clenched jaws.

He looked at me, and the fury dawned in his smoky eyes again. _No begging now, Naruto?_ he said viciously.

_Bit too late for begging, don't you think?_

He grabbed my wrists at that, twisted until the pain left burning bracelets on my arm. His hips plunged again – purposefully ruthless – but I didn't make a sound, knocked the pain back in silence.

_Never too late, Naruto,_ he hissed past my ear, his hips working. The pain made his voice brittle but the black texture of his words remained. _I can still make this enjoyable for you._

_You don't even know what you're doing,_ I spat back.

His rhythm quickened as if to spite me, but the pain only intensified. Each thrust crashed over my head in agony-laden waves. My hands found the sheets and then the pillow and I smelt the sweat on the linen from my previous customer, and right on cue my hand started to ache. An entire symphony of pain amplified twice over and I thought, This is nothing new, just ride it out, oh God, just a bit longer and it will all be over –

But then...

He made another thrust and suddenly I arched, gasped, my eyes wide. Complete reflex, my body was moving on its own. The pain was still there but something else this time – a tiny spark – _something_ – racing up my body with it. Unexpected, unbidden. A sudden stab of pleasure that forced my eyes wide and my hands to reach blindly for his shirt, grab it, _twist _–

_Sasuke._

The word escaped me before its meaning had even registered in my brain.

* * *

Sasuke

It hurt, he was so tight. I knew vaguely that pain came with the package but I hadn't expected pain for myself, it wasn't like that with women. With them the pain was one-sided, they felt it but you didn't. It wasn't that way with Naruto.

With Naruto the pain was a double-edged sword. He was so tight that I felt as if someone had their hands around my neck, slowly squeezing. In a fraction of a second I was dizzy, reeling, the pain hooking into my abdomen and forcing black spots before my eyes. I almost pulled out then. Almost.

But then he screamed. And I knew then that I'd hurt him more than he'd hurt me. It made everything worth it, somehow.

And when he spoke to me – the hatred was so material it transformed him, and it was suddenly as if I was looking into a mirror, those blue eyes mine instead, both filled with a furious crimson desire to destroy and hurt. It was our connection, a dark and twisted one, but a connection nonetheless. That night, we saw ourselves in each other.

When the pleasure finally came, when he arched up off the bed with his eyes blue-silver-black, my name spilling from his lips like water – it became complete. The connection solidified. We were bound in that single moment of painful pleasure, chained to each other.

_Desire..._

I thrust again, if only to hear that delicious word – _Sasuke_, whispered with a dazed surprise, as if he couldn't believe he'd felt something. _Sasuke. Sasuke._

_Say it again,_ I demanded breathlessly, peppering kisses over his shoulder.

_I – _

I growled, bit him hard enough to break skin. He shivered, his hands yanking desperately on my shirt.

_I – don't want – _

I pulled out, breaking his grip on my shirt. The rhythm broke with it and I let the passion cool, tried to still my ragged breathing. His eyes followed me, his face flushed, his hair a trussed-up mess. A small sound – part surprise, part need, part frustrated plea – dropped from his lips.

_Why – did you – _

_Say it,_ I whispered aggressively.

_No – _

_Say it._

He bucked up but I pinned his hips, forcing him to still.

_You – bastard,_ he choked out, the lust a darkened veil over his eyes.

I brushed my lips over his. _I want to hear my name, Naruto._

_Fuck you!_

I eased myself in slowly, so slowly it was almost painful. He gasped and turned his face away, stifling something in the pillow.

_Not giving in?_ I asked softly.

_I fucking hate you,_ he growled, his voice muffled. And then he suddenly reached up, wrenched me down by the hair. Our mouths crashed together in one suffocating collision and for a moment I was stunned.

Naruto kissing me – him initiating the kiss, it was unsettling. And he controlled it too, forcing himself into my mouth, and the taste was the coppery taste of blood from my lip.

_Sasuke,_ he said.

* * *

Naruto

Caught in the poison and caught in the dark infusion of blissful agony. With my tongue in his mouth and his breath in my throat, I looked up with the heat pooling at the base of my spine and my body straining for release against his stilled form – I look in his eyes, saw myself echoed in the charcoal black.

A sudden impulse seized me then. Primal, guttural, the ferocity of a cornered animal. I reached up, slid my hands under the black long-sleeved shirt he wore. There were scratches down his back. All the better. I smiled to myself with my teeth against my lips, decided I'd give the bastard what he wanted, give him his name.

_Sasuke,_ I said, with his blood on my tongue.

And then I waited, waited until his rhythm returned, waited until the pleasure fanned out between us and misted his stormcloud eyes.

I waited until the momentum had already carried him too far, and then I tore my nails viciously over his back. Over the barely-healed wounds. Heard his choked hiss of startled pain, his eyes wide, his blood hot beneath my fingertips –

And then he came, a gasp and a hiss against my skin. I came with him, let him pull me teetering over the brink and plummeting into a sweet, white-hot oblivion, my fingertips sticky and my revenge a hot bead of satisfaction in my belly.

Pain and pleasure. We dealt both to each other as if they were one and the same.

Two sides to every mirror...

* * *

Sasuke

He wasn't asleep but his back was to me. There were bruises on his shoulder, dusky purple, like blooming roses. I watched him, tracing the dip of his back with my eyes.

_Naruto,_ I said.

He didn't answer but I sensed a slight stiffening of the shoulders.

I settled myself onto one elbow, let my hair fall over my eyes. The world turned ebony black. My back stung but I ignored it.

_Why did you jump that night?_

_Because there are too many people like you in the world,_ he shot back without missing a beat.

I wasn't used to him like this, but Naruto with a little fire in his belly wasn't as bad as I'd thought. I'd reeled him a little closer to earth, a little further from the moon.

_I can get you out of here, if you want._

_Fuck you, Sasuke._

_I mean it._

_So do I._

_You can't honestly expect me to believe that you like it here._

_Maybe I do._

I snorted, but he didn't respond. His hair was a wet, sweat-darkened blonde against the pillow. The confused disarray fascinated me. I shook my bangs from my eyes, edged closer to him.

_It doesn't matter what you want,_ I said. _I've already spoken to your boss about it. We've come to an agreement._

That got a reaction. He flipped around, the sheets over his naked hips, and grabbed my arm so hard I winced. Crimson splotches stained the linen, and it was impossible to tell whether it was my blood or his.

_You didn't,_ he seethed at me.

I looked straight into his eyes and said, _I did._

He shoved me away as if I repulsed him. His eyes were contemptuous. _How much?_

_My secret._

_Don't fuck with me, Sasuke, I don't need it. How much did you buy me for?_

I didn't answer, shifted gingerly so that I could see the ceiling without disturbing my back. The shirt clung to me, sticky with my blood.

_How much did you pay,_ he repeated, voice low.

_Fifty-five thousand,_ I said, the number rolling smoothly off my tongue.

He stared at me for a long moment. The moonlight dripped off his hair, swelled in his blue-violet eyes.

_I hate you,_ he said finally.

I smiled up at the ceiling. _I know._

* * *

_Night turns to day and I still have these questions_

_You just won't break, should I go forwards or backwards_

_Night turns to day and I've still got no answers_

_Just a whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper..._

(Coldplay: _A Whisper_)

* * *

**A/N: Hope you guys got the Kyuubi reference.**

**Naruto might seem a little OOC, but don't worry folks, he's not going to be like this forever. I know this update was slightly late, but I got held up with schoolwork (in fact, I'm procrastinating my Chem assignment right now), and... well, I'm sure you don't care about my excuses.**

**I know I should be working on a Definitely Maybe or Black Rose update, but... instead I'm working on this fic and a little **_**Death Note**_** twelve-shot. Please watch out for it, it'll be titled **_**Requiem**_** (yes, I know, I know, old title) but it won't have the plot I'd previously planned for the **_**Naruto**_**-inspired **_**Requiem.**_** Nuh-uh. This one is gonna be brand new, and very very good (hopefully)...**

**Sayonara, sweethearts. Please don't forget to review.**


	5. Magic

**A/N: Wow, that was an amazing influx of reviews for Desire. Absolutely amazing. You guys are fantastic. I'd posted Desire hoping that I'd get six reviews or something like that, but when I next checked my account...**

**...I had **_**thirty-six**_** new reviews.**

**Six times six! I'm so happy. I love you all!**

**Thank-you oh-so-much to ****KittyBlue, Kazame, Blood Zephyr, Hopelesslielost, roar303, UchihaAkimoto, Writemyname, Navi, HilariousConspiracy, elegentmess, Solarstar7, Inu-bitch, kma3000, Anonymous, Alis rein silvervine, valgarath-zolthier, icyhiei, furbybeing, realityfling18, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, Asian Tinkerbell, cadywise, S. Wright, hollowsmile, xXxFrostyIceCubexXx, iamie, criesbloodredtears, JaRyse, SasuNaru-luv321, ShyHyperactiveNinja, and a, for reviewing!**

**I have to warn you all, this Chapter is quite bizarre. ****I'm going through a surrealistic streak. Hope you guys make it through alive. If you do, send me a review, because I'm compiling a body count (haha).**

* * *

**Five: Magic**

0-0-0

_When my love swears that she is made of truth,_

_I do believe her, though I know she lies._

(Troilus and Cressida)

0-0-0

Naruto

When I was small, about four or five, my parents took me to the park at night to watch the fireworks by the River.

It was a special occasion, someone's birthday or other, I don't quite remember the details. Or perhaps it was Christmas. It was a lovely, clear night, not too hot, with the cool air stirring faintly beneath the leaves of the jacaranda trees and wafting up delicate perfumes that lingered, like memories, in the night. My parents took me by the hand and walked me through the park.

That was the night my father taught me how to catch the fireflies. We stood still under the leaves, my mother with the glass jar and me on hands and knees, my eyes child-wide, silent and unmoving for perhaps the first time in my life. My father pointing into the bushes.

Him saying, _There._ _Look, Naruto. The fireflies._

And he'd taught me how to catch them, how to wait with bated breath in absolute silence; how to slowly inch closer, quietly, quietly, with the lid held ready in your hand; how to pounce, slam the jar closed at the last moment.

And there. A firefly. A light-bearer, caught in the palm of your hand.

The most beautiful thing you can ever imagine, catching that beacon of light in your hands, knowing that it is there, always there; and unless you open the jar, break the glass, it can never leave you.

It becomes the pivot of your world, the final desperate hope you cling to. Your firefly. Your candle in the dark.

And so there's something more to it than just closing the jar, screwing the lid on tight. There's something magical, something mysterious. That time I'd caught my first firefly, my father had put his hands over mine, so that we were both holding the jar of light between us.

And he'd said, with the light reflected in his eyes, _Make a wish. Make a wish, Naruto._

Make a wish. What can a child wish for? Bikes, toys, pocket money? No, not me.

So I'd wished. I'd opened my mouth, and chirped out what I'd wanted most in the world.

_I want us all to be together and happy forever and ever and ever!_

But that wasn't the way to do it. My mother had frowned at me, and there had been something serious in the gleam of her eyes.

_Don't say it aloud,_ she'd said. _Wishes don't come true if you say them out loud._

Because wishes are fragile – like any kind of magic, they are fragile. You cannot breathe on them, bring them out into the air, bring them out into the world. If you're not careful – if you touch them – they crumble into so much dust, the remnants of a broken jar.

Two years later, Father died. And my firefly was gone forever.

* * *

Sasuke

That night, I dreamed.

I dreamed that I was walking beside a large, black lake, the still waters glistening in the pale ring of moonlight. I was floating above the surface, looking down. The dark water a silent mass of nothing, a blanket of oil. As coldly fathomless as the depths of a black hole.

For a long time, that was all. Nothing. The world empty but for that cold moon, that black water. I didn't mind. My indifference to everything came naturally, my complete independence from reality. My world thrived on dreams like this. Black and silver. Life and Death.

I did not mind.

It was when I looked down again – my reflection wavering like a spirit on the water, wavering, wavering – that I realised how easy it would be, to reach out an indolent finger and shatter myself.

For a moment, I almost did it. But then there was the moon, calling me, dragging me back. At the last moment, I tore my gaze away from my own eyes in the water – _mirror mirror_ – and looked up, and even as I watched...

The moon began to fall, shedding light like the bright, cold petals of a rose. For a long while I wondered – in that slow, frozen way of dreams – but the moon-spell, that thing you cannot turn away from, consumed me in the end.

_Should I? Or shouldn't I?_

I reached out – into the darkness – and caught it.

* * *

Naruto

I don't know what it was that compelled me, but the moment I walked into Sasuke Uchiha's house for the second time – I knew.

It was an understanding impossible to explain. Words can only do so much, pin emotions to paper like the wings of a jewelled butterfly – the moment you try to catch it, it fades away, what was alive and a flash of colour in the air now dead and vacant, the hollow shell of what had once been. But that feeling exists nonetheless, that light tug of an invisible hand on your heart: that knowledge that you cannot stay.

Like that great jewelled butterfly, you need to keep moving on – alight on each flower, then off again – a flash only, a brief flicker in the air. It is not something you choose. Your heart chooses it for you. Afraid that, if you do not move, if you do not fly away –

Someone will catch you as well, pin your wings to paper...

It had nothing to do with Sasuke. That night, with my back against his stomach and the light wafting in through the taxi club window like a scent on the breeze, I'd fallen into a restless sleep that had jolted and jittered me as if I were on a moving train. Just lying there, suspended hazily in half-sleep, I'd felt the anger and the pain and even the blood-red hatred fade: little snatches of feeling that had escaped from behind my mask, snatches that were fiery and alive inside me but crumbled when they touched the air. Drained. My strength sapped, as if each droplet of emotion had sucked out a droplet of blood as well.

And so, in the dark, with his body next to mine and the moon shining high and still, I'd dreamed: of fireflies and glass and the _flash, flash, flicker-flash_ of fireworks by a river.

Sometime during the night I remembered the power coming back on – _flash, flash, flicker-flash_ – and the awkward moments that followed, the fumble for clothes, the fumble for the light-switch. Neither of us looking at the other. In the harsh, artificial light, we couldn't. There was something unsaid and unidentified that stopped us.

But with the lights off again, it became possible once more.

We retreated back to the bed, simply because there was nowhere for him to go, and nowhere for me to go either. And we'd lain there, not touching, because somehow that brief flash of light had broken the spell between us.

The next morning, I moved into his house.

So sudden and rushed – but Sasuke was like that, tipping from one extreme to the other like a planet out of orbit. I'd woken up in the passenger seat of his car, with the rain streaking outside the windows.

_Where are we going?_ I'd asked him.

And he hadn't answered.

Because neither of us knew, really – where were we going? Together, we were blind, stumbling into the dark because both of us feared the light. Going everywhere but nowhere. Needing just to run, run, from the world, from the light, from the dark, from ourselves.

I was wearing what I'd gone to bed wearing the night before, the pair of jeans and my ripped shirt, and the cold eased its way through the crevices of the car and into my skin. I looked out the window. The outside world was blurred, ungainly shapes through streaked glass. The sky a deadened tombstone grey. I could feel the rain roaring on the pavement, but through the glass there was nothing but a stifled sort of silence.

_Where are we going?_ I asked again.

_Home._

_Yours?_

He gave me a sharp look that I didn't understand. _Of course._

_Why didn't you wake me up?_

He shrugged, cut the wheel carelessly. My head spun with the car and I closed my eyes, willed the strange nausea away.

_I tried to. _Another cut of the wheel.

_Why are we moving today? Can't you hold yourself in for a week or something?_

_Sakura's in Milan today. She'll be back tomorrow night._

_Sakura?_

_My wife._

In the tiny space of the car our voices seemed muted, the words stale in the air, as if we were the only two people in the entire world. I looked out again and the storm-clouds laced the sky in deep grey wisps, the rain unceasing. Thick sheets of water, hurled against the car as if by some wrathful river-god.

I fiddled with the buckle of my seatbelt. _Why did you do it, Sasuke?_

He pretended not to comprehend. But I saw the way his fingers tightened on the wheel, the look that entered his eyes.

_Do what?_

_Last night._

There was a brief pause.

_I don't know,_ he said finally.

_Yes you do._

_I don't._

_Then why did you do it at all?_

_Why not?_

I had no answer to that, so I turned away and tapped my fingers against the handle of the car door. The window wipers swept up, then down; and for that brief, sudden moment the outside world was clear and understandable – but then the rain came again, and the world turned grey. I closed my eyes against the rain and tried to sleep. I could still feel the traces of my dream lingering in my mind, cobwebs that would not clear away.

_Your bags are in the back._

I opened my eyes. _Hmm._

His eyes darted to me and then back to the road. _I didn't bring everything. There's still some stuff I left at the taxi club._

_Hmm._

_They'll send someone with the stuff next week._

_Of course._

_You don't seem very interested._

_Should I be?_

He wasn't prepared for that. _Perhaps._

_I'm not, Uchiha. I don't care anymore. You tell me what to do and I'll do it, simple as that._

_What if I told you to jump off a bridge?_

Was I surprised? No, not really.

_Then you'd be doing me a favour,_ I said.

Up went the window wipers: then down again. Clear and then grey. A world reflected in the wide sweep of rain on glass.

_But would you do it?_ he asked after a brief moment of nothingness. _Would you jump off a bridge if I told you to?_

I looked out of the window so that I wouldn't have to look at him. _No, I wouldn't._

He nodded. He'd reached some hidden understanding about me: I could sense it in the air, the atmosphere as tense as a taut bowstring. The resolution was in the firm set of his jaw, the arc of the windscreen wipers, the flicker in his eyes. For a long, long time, there was silence as he drove.

I didn't recognise the road outside. We'd reached one of the more affluent suburbs, places that people like me don't dare venture into. The white is too bright for us, the white of picket fences and road paint and shining new cars. The white reminds us of something we would rather forget. Until I'd stepped into Sasuke's street two weeks ago, I'd almost forgotten it; but the world doesn't work that way, never that way. Things like that – the world doesn't want you to forget.

I sighed inwardly, covered my eyes with my hand. And I thought to myself, thought to Sasuke, No. No, I wouldn't jump off a bridge simply because you'd told me so. I'd jump because –

_We're here._

I blinked, gazed out through the smudged glass. _What?_

_We're here,_ he said again.

I didn't move. He waited for a few moments, then reached across me for the door handle. I pushed his hand away.

_Don't. I can get out myself._

_Then do it._

_It's raining._

_You'll survive._

_Will I?_

His eyes snapped to my face. Trying to make sense of what my words had meant, trying to see into me. I dodged his gaze and stared back at the window. Not out of it – because that was painful – but at it.

_What do you mean?_ he said quietly.

_Exactly what I said._

_The rain's not that heavy, we're not that far from the front door. We can run it._

_That wasn't what I..._

I trailed off, closing my eyes. It didn't matter. Nothing much mattered any more. What we want, what we don't want – how can we choose, when nothing is clear anymore? When we become distant even to ourselves, our very thoughts shut off from our minds, a door closed against the wind? When you cannot choose, you wish – but I'd given up wishing a long time ago, grown up too quickly and too soon.

Wishing was for children and the soon-to-die, a magic only for the beginning and the end.

I reached for the handle and stepped out into the rain.

I heard him get out after me, his movements unhurried. Neither of us ran for the front door. We just stood there, the grey water falling in slanted sheets, and for a long time we just looked at each other over the bonnet of the car.

He was the first to look away. _Come on,_ he said softly, so soft it was almost drowned out by the fall of rain on road. _Front door's that way._

And as he walked away, as his silhouette faded into the soft palette of grey and black and wavering silver – that sensation, that sudden obscure realisation, like lightning against a darkened sky. Flashing into me and out again. And in that instant, as if the knowledge had somehow been jolted into me – I knew.

I would not stay. I couldn't. He'd paid for me – but I was not his. Sooner or later, the wind would change, I would have to move on, drift away with it –

The rain suddenly felt colder, turned heavy against my skin.

When I finally reached him at the door, he was waiting for me.

He looked at my face. _You were thinking,_ he accused.

_Is that really such a surprise?_ I didn't meet his eyes, found salvation in the rivulets of water on the pavement. _Why are you waiting? Open the door._

He hesitated as if he was about to say something. For a moment, it looked like he would. But in the end, he didn't – isn't that always the way? – took out his keys, opened the door, and the silence between us hung as heavy as smoke.

* * *

Sasuke

He didn't seem angry, which surprised me. I suppose after the hatred, the fury, the pain in his eyes the night before – I'd expected something more. Perhaps the rain changed things, numbed him in the same way it numbed me. Like ice on a bruise – you don't forget the bruise is there, but everyone else does, and sometimes that's enough.

That morning, when he stepped out into the rain, the wind snatching at his shirt and rippling it against his skin – there'd been something there, something that rose up in me, an abrupt fear. It was unexplainable, irrational, something I'd never felt before. And the most stupid urge came over me, as inevitable as nightfall.

I'd wanted to reach out and pull him back. Pull him back to me. Pull him out of the rain.

But I didn't.

I don't know why, but I let him go. The nightfall stayed tucked away in the corner of my mind. And then I got out as well, felt the sudden rush of icy rain, the sharp sting of wind in my eyes.

I looked at him then, across the bonnet of the car, straight into his blue eyes. Neither of us moved, both afraid that the slightest breath would shatter that moment between us.

But wasn't that what I wanted? To shatter him, to break?

In the end, it was me who looked away first. And as I walked away from him, I realised why I was so afraid.

Because, watching him, seeing him in that rain – his contours hazed, shadowy against the grey, his figure fading into focus and then out again – he'd had that transiency about him, that fleetingness, that whispery feel: as if any moment now I could blink and he would be gone.

When he reached me at the door, I'd looked at him.

_You were drifting,_ I wanted to say. But my mouth wouldn't form the words.

_You were thinking,_ I said instead.

He didn't understand me, took my words at face value. _Is that really such a surprise?_ And then, _Why are you waiting? Open the door._

Why was I waiting? I didn't know. Until he'd pointed it out, I hadn't known I'd been waiting at all.

I turned to the door, opened it. The lock gave a soft pliant _clink_ under my hands. And then I went in, the rain still roaring behind my back, and the strange gnawing fear didn't make it past my eyes.

* * *

_Too much water hast thou, poor Ophelia,_

_And therefore I forbid my tears._

_I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,_

_But that this folly doubts it._

(Hamlet)

* * *

Sasuke

The storm had deepened.

I came out of the shower with the steam billowing out behind me, a towel around my neck. The house was quiet. The empty bedroom clothed in purple-blue shadows, every now and then flashing bone-white with the lightning. I stared for a moment, not for any reason, just because I didn't know what else to do.

The bedsheets were folded crisply over the bed – Sakura's work, she must have done it before she'd left yesterday. I went over to the bed and tugged the sheets back out of order.

I'd left the light on in the bathroom and I went back to switch it off. It was four-thirty, but the sky was so dark it might as well have been eight. I pulled the towel closer to my skin and got dressed in the dark. All the while I listened, but no sound came from downstairs: Naruto was probably sleeping, or perhaps watching television with the sound turned low. Up here, in the loneliness of my bedroom, the air was still and silent.

I gave my hair one last rub with the towel before tossing it on the bed. And then I stood again, listened. Still nothing.

Sleeping, I decided. He didn't seem the type to watch a lot of TV. I went to the window and looked out, but I couldn't see anything but the steady drip of rain.

There was a moth on the windowsill, hiding from the water. I reached out and tapped the glass. It didn't move. So I opened the window, flicked it out into the rain; and when I closed the window again I felt a little better.

But the silence was there again, smothering like cotton wool...

I went to the door. The hallway was silent too, the lights off, the photographs on the walls – all Sakura, none me – flitting in and out of sight with the lightning. I shoved my hands in my pockets and started off towards the stairs, avoiding the multiple sets of bright green eyes following me from the walls.

_Naruto?_ I called.

And my voice echoed back, as hollow as a pebble tossed into a cave.

_Naruto,_ I tried again.

Still nothing. And I thought, One last time. Third time lucky.

_Naruto!_

And there was Sakura watching me from the walls, smiling, a knowing glint in her frozen eyes.

And suddenly, just like that – instant, a prick from a needle – the fear came over me again. It was stupid, childish, but I couldn't help it. Perhaps it was the emptiness of the house, the complete silence, the clinging shadows. Perhaps it brought back memories. I don't know. But the fear was there, choking, a sudden onset of feverish intensity that made me break into a run. It was familiar – oh, so terribly, terrifyingly familiar – maybe I'd dreamt of it once, moonlight on a black, black lake. Ink bleeding onto silver glass. My terror snapping at my heels like hounds at a deer.

Just like that, nightfall came. So simple: just a drawing down of blinds.

And suddenly, it's as if you've taken a breath but there's no air in it, you can't breathe; the panic leeching out your blood; and all you can think of, all you can see before your eyes –

Is nothing. Darkness. The moon crumbling to dust in your hands.

...and that was all it took.

_Naruto!_

I slammed around the corner, my breath trembling with my panicked fear. Something twisting in my chest, something almost akin to pain. Something alive.

_Naruto! _I yelled again. _Naruto! Naruto!_

And at that moment, for no reason at all, I thought of the moth I'd flicked off the windowsill, fluttering blindly towards the light...

– the world watching, watching, bright green eyes watching me as I fell –

_Should I? Shouldn't I? But what am I choosing...?_

And then I stopped.

There.

There he was.

Standing on the opposite side of the marble staircase, in the hallway. A window open. Him staring out, the rain flying in and drenching his already-drenched hair, his hands on the open sill.

And I knew then – my entire body seizing up with the realisation, my breath catching in my throat – that he had chosen.

He was going to jump.

That single moment – _frozen in time, a piece of eternity dropped into your hands, and who knows...?_

He turned and looked at me. And the moment fell away, torn like paper snatched by the breeze.

_Naruto!_ I screamed.

And I ran – something in my throat, something that smothered – and when I reached him I grabbed his arm, yanked him away, slammed the window shut so hard the glass cracked.

And then I hit him – hard, right across the face.

_You – you – _

The words wouldn't come, my fear so overwhelming that it morphed into rage, a full-fledged fury that shook me to the core.

_You – _I hit him again, caught him when he tried to turn away, forced him to face me. _You – I can't believe – _

_Let go, Sasuke._

So calm: and even as the bruise formed nothing changed in his eyes, nothing at all.

_You were going to jump!_

_I wasn't._

_Then why – _

He didn't answer, and his silence only made my terror worse. I was shaking. I wanted to hit him again but I couldn't steady myself enough to do it, couldn't think through the haze in my brain.

_Let go, Sasuke,_ he said again.

_No!_

I still had him by the wrist and I tightened my grip, ignoring his wince of pain. And I thought, No, no, no, no...

I've chosen too – and I won't let you slip away from me... Not again...

_Sasuke, let – _

_You were going to jump,_ I accused again wildly. _I saw you, you were going to – _

The calm in his eyes rippled, faded away, and suddenly he was just as angry as I was.

_Let go of me, you bastard – _

_Not if you try to jump out a fucking window – _

_I wasn't going to jump – _

_Then what were you doing?_ I snarled nastily. _Admiring the view?_

He punched me. I staggered back with the blow, stunned. My back fell against the cracked window and the glass split, showered us both with splinters. It didn't stop him – he followed up his punch with another one, straight into my stomach, and I gasped with the dull pain.

_Don't you dare think I'm yours,_ he hissed furiously into my face. _Don't you dare – _

I elbowed him, grabbed his arm and slammed him against the wall. I was about to hit him when he twisted away, his blue eyes flashing as bright as the lightning. The storm reflected twice over in their depths. The water catching in the light of his hair. And his words, ringing in the air, as cold as moon-chilled ice –

_I'm not staying._

_I fucking paid fifty-five grand for you!_

_You didn't pay __**me**__._

_I as good as paid you!_

_What, really?_ His voice matched mine now, low as thunder, each distilled drop of poison black against the pearl of his teeth – _By raping me? Is that my payment? Is that what my life is worth to you?_

_Your life is __**mine**__!_ I growled. _Without me you'd be dead!_

_Without you I'd be somewhere better than this!_

_What, floating in the fucking Brisbane River?_ I laughed harshly, the sound chafing the air like sandpaper. _Yeah, great place Naruto, what with the fish and all – real picturesque – _

He snarled and leapt at me, but I'd seen it coming and his punch met thin air. We'd somehow ended up in the hallway again and his next lunge sent me crashing into the wall. Picture frames came off their hooks and smashed on the floor. I shoved him off me onto the floor and scrambled to my feet; and then we just paused, caught our breaths, waited like circling lions. Both wet – me from my shower and him from the rain, but when I wiped a hand over my cheek it wasn't water but blood. There was a sharp sting somewhere near my cheekbone.

He looked up at me through his hair. _Were you brought up like this, or were you just born a bastard?_

I met his cutting sarcasm with some of my own. _It's in the blood. Can't help myself._

_Excuses._

I blinked at him, but he didn't say anything more. The rain grew heavier outside. And slowly, the anger drained away, floated away from me like the water. Gradual, gradual, the blinds retreating up again. I felt my fists unclench. Pried my nails from my palms.

The lightning flashed – once, twice.

_Don't try that again,_ I said.

_Try what?_

_Jumping._

He gave a feeble little laugh. I held out a hand to him on the floor.

He took it.

_I won't,_ he said.

I looked at him as he pulled himself up. His eyes were glassed again, calm. And as we both headed downstairs, neither of us said a word – because magic is a fragile thing, and so are lies.

* * *

Naruto

It was a shaky truce we held after that, both of us like dancers treading the edge of a floor, every move weighed and cautious and confused. An equilibrium held together by the scraps of our uncertainty. A set of scales we were too afraid to tip, because you can never be sure of what you're doing, what you're throwing yourself into.

Neither of us made a move to clean up the broken window. The rain pooled in great wet puddles but we didn't acknowledge it, pretended the cracks weren't there. We sat in the kitchen downstairs and he made me a coffee as if nothing had happened.

_When did you say Sakura was coming back?_ I asked vaguely.

_Tomorrow._

I sipped at the coffee, not tasting it. He stared listlessly at the counter.

_What time is it?_ I said after a while, just to break the silence.

_Five-ten._

_Hmm._

_You hungry?_

_No._

_You didn't have lunch._

_I'm not hungry,_ I repeated.

He paused. His eyes met mine.

_Me neither,_ he said.

I sighed, put the coffee down. I didn't feel like caffeine, and I didn't feel like pretending that I did. Now that I'd cleared my mind a little, I realised just how wet and cold I was.

Sasuke seemed to realise too.

_You want a shower?_

_Yeah,_ I said. Slid off the kitchen stool, the marble cold beneath my feet. _Which way's the bathroom?_

_Upstairs._

I decided to throw in a barb. _What, not rich enough to have one downstairs? _

He stared at me. _I do, but it's Sakura's._

_Oh._

_Your bags are still in the boot of the car._

_I'll get them._

_You're wet._

_Exactly. I won't mind getting a bit wetter._

Something about those words seemed to jar in his mind and his eyes narrowed.

_No. I'll lend you some clothes. I'll get the bags for you later tonight._

My lips tweaked in a humourless smile. _What, you think I'd make a run for it?_

_I can't tell with someone like you._

_I already told you I wouldn't do something like that._

_You told me you wouldn't jump._

_I didn't._

_Close call, though._

_I told you I'd do whatever you wanted me to do._

He put his coffee down, his shoulders tense. His eyes leapt out at me from the shadows, coal-black against his pale skin. _I don't believe you._

And we were back to square one again, no progress made at all. I shrugged to show him that I didn't care, moved towards the doorway.

_Whatever,_ I said tiredly. And then I padded my way up the staircase, and on my left the broken window was still bleeding silver water onto the marble tiles.

* * *

Sasuke

When the storm died, things were different.

We didn't turn on the lights. We had dinner in the dark. And later, lying on the bed, I kissed him.

It was alright. The moon wasn't out.

And we'd lain there, him in my arms. Just lain there. He didn't fight.

There was no moon. There was no water.

And it was alright.

Because, lying there together, not saying anything, the moment was beautiful.

And everything is beautiful in the dark.

* * *

**A/N: Like I said, hope you made it out alive. Seriously. I know not a lot happened, but my friend read it the other day and she told me I was crazy. I don't know, I just love experimenting, trying out some evocative things, trying to capture things. Guess I'm weird. But this story is my firefly in a jar, I'm so scared of mucking it up...**

**You know what I mean? Because it seems to me that Sasuke and Naruto are in their own little glass world, and I really want to move the plot along but to do that I need to introduce new characters – but I'm scared of disturbing the glass too much, ne? Ugh, dilemmas. Oh well. New characters coming up next Chapter, glass and what-not be damned.**

**Anyway, yeah. I'm in a weird mood at the moment, stressing out at school, so this story is my escape. (I have exam block next week...) **

**So, what did you guys think? Good, bad, undecided? If you don't review, I will go on hiatus. Sort of.**

**Review, please! Love you all!**


	6. Consequence

**A/N: Thank-you oh-so-much for the reviews, they make me very very happy indeed.**

**Especially, thanks to seeing-the-light, falconXXfaerie, utoi, hollowsmile, elveljung, Blood Zephyr, cadywise, StreetRacerSakura, narsus (hope your exam went well!), S. Wright, animefreak312, Solarstar7, DeliciouslyGood (thanks for the offer, but I'm not looking for a beta at the moment – I'll let you know if I change my mind later! XD), .Kumori- , Akirakun17, blueandorangesky10, Inu-bitch, A Single Fragile Rose, Hopelesslielost, Fuurai, redfoxmoon, HilariousConspiracy, kitsunelova, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, KittyBlue, imaxgoxgnomgnomxonxya, Naruto-Commenter, Loud-Little-Thing, Hispanic Tenshi, and Alis rein silvervine. Love you lots and lots!**

**I've decided that, since we're so close to hitting the 100-review mark (and I've never before hit three digits), I'm going to implement a little celebration scheme. From now on, whenever the review count hits a 50 mark (i.e. 100, 150, 200, etc.) I'm going to celebrate by putting out a special One-shot. That way, I can thank all my fantastic reviewers properly, because I never have enough time to reply to each review individually.**

**I've already done an in-anticipation-of-100-reviews celebratory One-shot, titled **_**Marche Funebre**_**. It's ItaSasu, please check it out on my Profile!**

**Hope you enjoy the upcoming Chapter – it'll be a bit choppy due to all the different character POVs, but I hope you don't mind – and please review!**

* * *

**Six: Consequence**

0-0-0

_Butterfly Effect, n. _

_The effect by which a minute variation in a dynamic system can lead to a large consequence._

0-0-0

Sasuke

It is a law of science that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

It is the act of Symmetry – of balance, everything in the universe countered by another. It is what preserves the cosmos as we know it, the sense of a jagged order amongst the chaos. Without it we would be lost.

Each force has its counterforce. Each particle has its antiparticle. Every bell-beat of Time has its echo, perhaps not in this world, but in another.

Every action has its consequence.

The tragic beauty of Symmetry – the beauty of perfection, of mirrors and circles and the orbit of stars. You drop a pebble into a pond and as the ripples fan out in perfect, concentric rings (like that first divine light at the beginning of the world) –

– you realise that you have altered something.

So what is the consequence? Where have those ripples gone?

Because on this side of the water, Time is frozen. It is Winter. The sky is cold.

But on the other side – in another world – the day is Spring.

* * *

Sakura

I noticed.

In his eyes – in his words – even in his silence. A restlessness. He looked at me and I felt as if my heart would burst, swell and yield under the pressure of all those undefined feelings that only Sasuke could bring out in me.

He looked at me – and I knew he saw someone else.

He spoke to me – and I knew he was speaking to my shadow instead.

He touched me – and I knew that he was gone, finally gone, I'd lost him.

After all that time...

All those girls – and they came from everywhere – but all the same I'd loved him, because he was a part of me, and I couldn't imagine a world where he didn't exist. It is the simplest kind of love, the thoughtless kind; what escapes pure from your heart, untainted by your mind and what you know is good for you. Sometimes, I didn't even mind his cruelty; his hard words, his viciousness, the way he locked his door against me.

Sometimes, anything is better than Nothing. Even Pain.

And I know – people laugh at me, say that I'm deluded, naive. And perhaps I am.

But sometimes you cannot help yourself. We are human – we are not gods. There is a reason why people don't fly in love, they fall. Because Love – is elusive, sly, a shape-shifting beauty that you cannot ever catch, a Daphne for Apollo.

Twice in the night he came to me – twice I could not turn him away, as he had turned me away.

So do you see?

There is nothing you can say. Nothing you can believe anymore. When they look at you, their eyes are cold, because to them you are nothing.

And who can you blame?

No-one. Because you are No-one, and there is No-one else to blame.

* * *

Naruto

I watched him while he slept. It was morning and the sunlight filtered in through the open window, dusted over his skin in a smooth sheen of pale gold. I sat beside him on the mattress and watched the light bead in glowing pinpoints on his dark lashes, his breathing steady and slow.

I could've left that very morning. He was asleep and I knew where he kept his keys, it would've been easy. Just a matter of getting up, going downstairs, picking up the key-ring-bunch on the kitchen table and letting myself out, closing the door behind me and walking away. By the time he woke up I would've been gone, and I knew – without even knowing him, I knew – that his pride would not let him go after me again.

But something held me back.

If last night had never happened, I would've done it. But last night, he had kissed me, and for some reason that single kiss had been different. The way he'd held me, the way he'd breathed those words almost feverishly into my ear –

_Stay, Naruto, stay with me, please stay – _

– they'd changed things. He could've had me again that night, in the same way that he had taken me in the taxi club – but he didn't do it, just kissed me and lain still.

Perhaps, that night, he was fighting himself.

So I could not find it in me to leave him. Not yet. He was fighting his own demons and I knew that if I left, I would be giving in to mine. And so that morning I didn't get up; I didn't go downstairs; I didn't pick up the keys on the kitchen counter and let myself out, slip away like a sliver of fog.

I sat beside him on the mattress and I watched over his sleep: my beautiful, cold, broken angel who'd pulled me from the river that night in December.

* * *

Temari

Heh.

Sasuke Uchiha? Yeah, I knew the name. Nowadays, who didn't? Maybe if you lived on Mars. At least then you had an excuse.

We journalists – we don't have an excuse. At least not one so plausible, anyway. Outrageous is our art; we are the Kings and Queens of bitch-faced lying; and anyway, if you really do want our excuse you're going to have to pay us first. Because we don't do charity, _kid_.

Yeah, I know. Shit happens. Just deal with it.

The way things happened with Sasuke was quite unexpected, really. It was me on a quest for a regular interview, armed with my usual cache of gum and cigarettes. And fishnets, incidentally. (But that's beside the point.) And him, well, he wasn't even there.

But that was fine. Sasuke Uchiha not turning up for interviews was commonplace. We have an office pool going on when we think he's going to turn up to one of ours – _turn up_, that is, not _turn up on time_. Because that would be something for the next generation to look forward to, it's certainly not happening in this lifetime. Period.

And if he had turned up to that interview in May – well, it's the butterfly effect, I guess. I would never have met Him.

(And no, I'm not referring to God. Though that could be interesting.)

He worked for Sasuke, apparently they grew up together. A certain Shikamaru Nara. Hair in a ponytail, a way of looking up from under his lids instead of directly at you – a sceptic quirk to his eyebrow that told you he thought you a complete waste of space/time/oxygen, and wasn't afraid to tell you so if you bothered to ask. The attitude of a sloth sitting on an AK47. Claw on the safety catch.

He was different. And I liked it.

I'm not one to go with the flow – a girl like me goes against the grain, rubs up the fur and not down. I was not supposed to be a journalist at all, I was supposed to go to Med school.

But once my father got harassed in a court case by a pack of journalists – came home throwing about some colourful terms that didn't match the leather interior of our Mercedes Benz. And I decided then and there to become one of them too. Decided to ditch the ivy-brick walls, the brocade curtains. Become one of the journalists.

One of the hot-shots. Wolves in the pack. Sharpen my nails on something more than a nail-file.

(Just for kicks. Just to piss the old man off.)

And Shikamaru – he was bored, like me. He was in his job to piss people off, like me. And even from the first moment that he spoke to me in that tell-tale drawl of his, I knew that he didn't like me one bit.

It was great. Pissing people off is my forte.

I'd walked into the Uchiha Corporation that morning without going through the Receptionist, mainly because said Receptionist looked about as thick as my father's _A Short History of Australian Law_. And so I'd spent the entire time wandering the corridors, half-expecting Security to come ambushing around the corner with Glock handguns. Luckily for both parties involved, that didn't happen.

It had taken me five minutes to decide that Sasuke I've-Got-A-Dead-Bird-As-My-Hairstyle-Uchiha wasn't anywhere in the building, and that my interview was as good as a dead battery. And another five to decide that, hell, if the bastard had set me up, I sure was going to wreak as much havoc as I humanly could before I got kicked out.

I guess I hit the jackpot with Shikamaru.

He didn't humour me. Most males at least blink or look surprised when a woman in a tight top, ruthlessly-mini miniskirt, and fishnets tapering into six-inch stilettos comes ploughing into their office like she owns it – but he didn't.

Fixed me with a look. Raised an eyebrow. And said, _I think you're on the wrong street._

On the wrong street. Heh. As if I was a hooker.

Smart-ass.

For a stunned moment I just stared at him. Speechless for the first time in my life. And then I thought to myself, quite viciously, So that's how you want it, smart-ass? Well.

So I'd crossed the office – went and sat myself on top of his desk, taking care to knock off as many papers as I could. Crossed my legs a ruler-length from his face. Smirked at him, leaned forward so that his sightline met my cleavage.

_Happy birthday,_ I'd purred at him. _I'm sorry, my heels didn't fit in the cake._

And then, just to rub it in, I'd removed the gum from my mouth and stuck it – while he watched – under the rim of his desk.

And I'd thought, Heh. Suck on that, smart-ass.

He'd stared at me. I stared right back, my eyes a challenge. Admittedly, I did dress like a hooker – but that was to irritate my morally-up-tight, stick-up-his-ass father. Nobody called me a hooker – out loud or implied – and got away with it cleanly.

_Who are you?_ he'd said finally. No expression on his face.

I matched his monotone but added a mocking twist. _Take a guess, honey-pie._

_Are you looking for Sasuke?_

I stretched the smirk. _Perhaps._

_He's not in today._

_Yes, I noticed._

_He's married, as you no doubt know._

As I no doubt knew? What was he implying, that I was an airheaded bimbo? Anybody with an IQ above 50 and did not live on a deserted island in the Pacific knew that Sasuke Uchiha was married.

_No_, I said bitingly. _I didn't know that he was married to Sakura Haruno, aged nineteen and three quarters, female, actress. Born in Perth, father was a limousine chauffeur. Star sign Virgo. Currently worth half a million dollars. Contract with Newline expires next month._

And then I thought, Heh.

He blinked and looked at me more closely. A genuinely perplexed light in his eyes now, and I fought the triumphant smirk that struggled to surface on my lips.

_You're not with him._

_Of course not._

_How do you know him?_

_I'm psychic._

To my surprise, he smiled at my sarcasm. And the smile – it was nothing that I expected, it was small, pure, strangely free. He uncrossed his arms. And I thought of the bright beam of a lighthouse cutting through fog.

_I'm Shikamaru Nara,_ he said.

_I'm Temari Sabaku,_ I said. _And what your name is, I really don't give a shit._

_Are you a journalist?_

_My my, how did you guess?_

He smiled. Again. Clear under the sharp, slicing gaze.

_I'm psychic,_ he said.

* * *

Shikamaru

Before Temari – well.

It's hard to describe, I don't know what words to use, and anyway fumbling for words is so troublesome. So I guess I have to sum everything up in one word. Or maybe one sentence. Whatever.

Before Temari – I was bored out of my mind.

Afterwards – well.

She was quick, razor-sharp, she didn't settle for crap. If she didn't like you, she let you know right away. Dressed like a slut but her morals – she didn't like to call them _morals_, probably because her father called them _morals_, but they were _morals_ nonetheless – were as impeccable as the way she did her hair. She didn't smile; one corner of her red-lipstick mouth would twist down and that amused glimmer would enter her green eyes. She ate more than I did and could smoke her way through two packs of Marlboros a day without breaking a sweat.

She was like a breath of fresh air. The challenge that I'd been desperately searching for. Someone to break through the haze.

After that morning, when she'd barged into my office in fishnets, red stilettos stabbing fiercely at the carpet –

Well.

Like I said, I can't be bothered searching for words. They don't mean much to me. But I know that even when she left again (_stab stab_ with those heels of hers), even then, watching her ash-blonde hair slam its way out of my office as if she hoped to remove a wall –

– even then, I didn't remove the gum from my desk. I couldn't. And I knew – just somehow knew (maybe I really was psychic after all) – that I would see her again.

* * *

Hinata

Sakura. Green, the colour of wet moss. Seaglass on the sand. The orange of peeling paint and rusting drainpipes, a fading royal blue. The colour of forgotten velvet, soft and mellow and melting into the air.

The colours shuffle before my eyes like cards, shifting every time I try to pin them down. Alive.

I turn the page.

Sasuke. Violet, a deep shade of shadow-bruise indigo that seeps through the planes to a pulsating black. Blue – but only just, a metallic blue, hard and cold as steel. Blue as an otherworldly sky, mirrored from still waters like the slow spread of ink.

I turn the page.

She watches me. Perhaps she is waiting for me to say something. I bite my lip, tremble. The look in her eyes is so close to hope that I feel sick.

We are on the plane. Going home.

_Hinata,_ she says.

I turn the page.

_What colour is he?_ she says.

I turn the page.

And I wish, not for the first time, that the colours would leave me. That I would not have to see them. That I would not have to lie.

I look at his name again on the magazine. Sasuke Uchiha.

_I d-d-don't know, Sakura,_ I say. _I cannot see his colours._

She doesn't believe me. I can see it in the orange of her voice, the fragile tremor in her moss-fade eyes, her voice too high and feverish to be real. And I am afraid, for her and for myself, because I have not been able to save her.

She called me to go to Milan with her – shopping – but I knew just from her laughter that something was wrong. That night two nights ago, her voice shrill down the phone line, as if choked at the throat.

_Hinata, come to Milan with me,_ she'd said. _Come to Milan._

Silently begging me to save her, to save her from something she didn't understand. Something I didn't understand either.

Ripples in a distant pond, something you cannot stop. The worst kind of death. Slow, inward, a gradual slide into fearful dark.

And now, going home.

I tried. But in the end, I can do no more – because the orange in her voice is the orange of Autumn and dying sunsets, the orange of wind-bleached leaves in a storm-bleached gutter.

She is Sakura. And her voice – her eyes – are orange, the colour of decay.

* * *

Sasuke

When I woke, he was watching me.

His eyes were soft, impossibly beautiful. He leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth.

Just once.

_Naruto_, I said.

He didn't reply. But I recognised the tincture to his eyes, understood the hidden meaning. Those eyes were so sad and so gentle that I felt as if I would break.

_I don't forgive you,_ he said quietly.

It was alright. He had stayed. It was enough.

I smiled, but there was no malice in it, only a strange and overwhelming sense of relief.

_Thank-you_, I whispered.

He didn't speak. He didn't need to. He had stayed, and it was enough.

* * *

_The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,_

_Though to itself, it only live and die._

(Sonnet 94)

* * *

Hinata

The day is hot, the sun out. We sit in silence. The car slices through the thick afternoon air, parts shimmering waves that rise from the road.

She is dying. I can taste it, the stifling blues and purples crusted like frost on her eyelashes. I want to reach out and touch her – just to see if she would notice – but I cannot conquer myself, twist my fingers in my lap. I feel so useless. So helpless. She is dying in front of me and I cannot save her.

_Can you feel it, Hinata?_

Her voice is almost as bitter as the silence itself. A resigned bitterness, a fading.

_W-what, Sakura?_

_In the air._ She is beautiful, beautiful as the twilight. _It's in the air._

_What is in the air?_

_Something is changing,_ she says then, without looking at me. And then she says no more, and the car races on, and the waves of heat break over the windscreen like the fragments of a forgotten dream.

* * *

Naruto

She came in.

Tall, her head held high, her eyes hidden behind large black sunglasses. She looked so confident and so beautiful that for a moment I just stood there, staring at her, not saying a word.

She froze when she saw me. I was standing by the door of the foyer, and it took her a few minutes to notice. The house was silent, Sasuke had gone to work; the air clumped in stillborn clusters on the walls, cold and eerie, as if caging the two of us in.

She didn't speak.

I didn't speak.

She swallowed. I followed the motion down the smooth curve of her throat. She had a suitcase behind her and she dropped the handle, didn't turn when it smashed forward against the marble tiles. And then, almost robotically, she looked away from me and began removing her high-heeled shoes, placing them neatly by the door as if she were a guest in a foreign house.

_Please don't_, I said.

If she heard the pleading in my voice she didn't acknowledge it. Left the suitcase there, swept past me in the doorway, the muscles in her throat working silently. I followed her.

She went to the kitchen. I couldn't see what she was doing.

_Mrs Haruno,_ I said from the doorway again, my heart twisting painfully in my chest.

_Uchiha. My surname is Uchiha._ She turned to me, and the sunlight flashed off her sunglasses. _I am a married woman._

_I'm sorry – _

_No, you're not._ She folded her arms. _Don't say that, please. It makes things worse._

I had no reply to that, so I said nothing. She turned away from me again, went to the fridge, and for a while she was hidden behind the steel door. When she turned back around she had a bottle of wine in her hands.

To my surprise, she smiled at me. _Would you like a drink?_

_I – no, thank-you,_ I stumbled, unprepared.

The smile faded into something harder. _Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. Wrong order of things, right, Mr Uzumaki? I should be asking for your permission to open the fridge now. I'm sorry I forgot my place._

I understood her smile now, the desperate way she held her shoulders. A tear leaked past her cheek and she turned hurriedly away, hiding behind her glass.

There was a slight pause.

_Please don't,_ I said again.

_May I have a drink then?_ she asked quietly, her face turned away. Her voice was tremulous, a little high, the voice of a scolded child. _Please?_

_I – _I wanted to go to her, hold her, but I couldn't. I couldn't. _Yeah, well, this is your house, so – _

_Thank-you._

She didn't pour a glass, as I'd thought she would. She struggled the cork off and then lifted the entire bottle to her lips. Her hands were shaking and the wine was a bruised garnet against her lips.

I turned away. For some reason, I couldn't watch her.

I was just about to go when her voice came again, small and tired in the syrupy air.

_Why?_

I didn't answer.

She put the bottle down, removed her sunglasses. Her eyes were a worn shade of green, and they were watching me with an almost child-like helplessness.

She was crying but she didn't seem to notice.

_Why?_ she said again. There was no blame in her voice, just nothing.

_Your guess is as good as mine,_ I said quietly. And then I slipped away, soft with the shadows, and left her – tall, beautiful, and aching – to herself.

* * *

Sakura

Why?

When everything else leaves you, that is the only word that remains.

And so you ask yourself, Why?

There is no answer. There is never an answer. Because it is not a question that you can answer, and the only person who can answer it has gone out of your life already. It doesn't hurt – there is no stabbing pain, no sharp scything slice through your body – but rather it is a numbed soreness, like the distant rumble of drums. A slow compression on your lungs, as if someone has laid you on your back and applied leaden weights to your chest. It does not kill. It crushes.

When he left me alone, I put the sunglasses back on. And I told myself, Sasuke will be home soon. I will not cry in front of him. I will not.

So I opened the cupboard, took out a wineglass. And as I watched the crimson liquid swirl into it, I thought of candles and roses and the light in my eyes when he'd first asked me to marry him.

* * *

Temari

Gaara was in my apartment when I arrived home. The little rat. He must've stolen my keys somewhere along the line and made a copy.

I glared at him, dropped my bag on the floor and went to open the curtains. For some reason, Gaara never liked the curtains open. He liked to stew in the dark. I half-expected him to stop me from opening them, but he didn't, just sat with his legs crossed at the knee and watched me with his glacial eyes.

_What are you doing here,_ I snapped at him when I could finally see his face. _Go home._

_I can't._

It didn't surprise me. Father was always kicking him out of the house.

_I don't care. Go away. You're not staying with me for another one of your straightening-out trips. _I crossed the room to extricate myself from my shoes. _Stay with Kankurou or something. Or, better yet, get your own apartment._

_I can't,_ he said again.

There was a sign in his voice and I turned to look at him, really look at him. His hair was its usual shock of bright red but his eyes were different. I couldn't put my finger on why. I glared at him again to compensate for my unease.

_Fuck off,_ I said.

_No._

_Gaara, get out of my apartment. I have work to do. Go home. Tell Dad I sent you._

_Dad won't care._

_Gaara. I mean it._

_Dad's dead._

I froze. Stared at him. _What did you say?_

He shrugged at me. And suddenly I realised that he had something in his hand, something silver that glinted in the slanting light from the window. A cigarette lighter.

I could feel my voice start to shake, but I levelled it.

_Gaara, please tell me that this is just another of your sick jokes. Please._

_Maybe._

He looked away from me and his thumb flicked the lighter. There was a frozen sort of smile on his face that I'd never seen before. With a soft _snick_ the flame grated to life, and then he _snick-_ed it dead again.

_Maybe? What's that supposed to mean?_

_I don't know. I'm not sure. And anyway, I didn't say anything._

_Gaara. Stop fucking around._

_There was a fire._

_You didn't._

_It'll be in the papers tomorrow._

_Gaara, look me in the eye – _

He did, and the words clammed up in my mouth. The second time in my life that I didn't know what to say.

_It'll be in the papers,_ he said again. And then he flicked the lighter, on, off, and the light was an unearthly green behind the frosted glass of his eyes.

* * *

**A/N: That...**

**...was ridiculously hard to write.**

**I've just finished Exam Block and my brain's half-dead. So I'm sorry if this Chapter was jumpy, but I was aiming for the jumpy-choppy effect – as in, like a stack of photographs, little snaps of perspective from a whole heap of different characters. (That was not supposed to be poetic or anything, it was honestly what was in my head when I wrote this.)**

**Um, moving on; just a few things to clear up before I finish:**

**Hinata has synaesthesia. She sees words and sounds in colours.**

**Temari and Shikamaru's relationship is meant to be like a "foil", or a contrast, to Sasuke and Naruto's.**

**Next chapter will be violent... and it will have yaoi. You have been warned.**

**Thanks to all reviewers! Please don't forget to review, or else I might run out of inspiration (tear...)**


	7. Flame

**A/N: Haha, thanks guys, I hit 100 reviews! Woohoo!**

**...(Author is on Cloud Nine)...**

**Fast update this time, I know, but I'm going on holiday this week so I had to get this Chapter out... and my last Chapter was so late that I felt bad.**

**Thanks to Michelle (wow, what a fantastically long and in-depth review! Thank-you so much for the poem, I loved it!), hollowsmile, Vivid Impact, HilariousConspiracy, roar303, Hispanic Tenshi, Patet, cadywise, narsas, utoi, blueandorangesky10, Writer Black Butterfly, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, elveljung, Queen Valgarity, OrangeSpiral, StreetRacerSakura, jureez, losethemask, and –.Kumori–. You guys rock my socks.**

**I'm sure you guys all realised, but for those who didn't, we have reached Chapter Seven – the magic number! Reminiscent of our beloved Team Seven. I've put in a special effort for this Chapter to honour the occasion, so yes, THERE WILL BE YAOI IN THIS CHAPTER. (It won't be what you expect, though, as I'm sure you guys have already come to realise from reading Desire.) **

**Oh, and another thing, this Chapter is long. Yeah. Just to let you know.**

**And so we have...**

* * *

**Seven: Flame**

0-0-0

_Out, out brief candle!_

_Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player_

_That struts and frets his hour upon the stage_

_And then is heard no more. It is a tale_

_Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,_

_Signifying nothing._

(Macbeth)

0-0-0

Hinata

The night bruises easily, the texture of tulle and rough gauze strapped into a darkened sky. Neji calls me late, and his voice is the usual dove-shell-grey, as ghostly pale as the memory of his eyes.

_Where are you?_ he demands.

For a moment his voice sharpens into a sudden spike of red. The colour is too bright and I wince, flinch away from the phone. He has done it to spite me. He can see the scarlet too, the tongue of a viper in the cool night air.

_I – uh, I just got h-home,_ I blunder, blushing at nothing. The pain has disorientated me, made me forget where I am. _From Milan, I mean._

_Milan?_

_Sakura, she, um, she wanted – _

_I don't want you to go near Sakura any more, Hinata._

The warning is a cool mint green, like the frosted curves of an oriental jade. Neji can call upon such beautiful colours, shake the hues as rich as jewels from each and every word. I cannot help but admire him.

_Neji, she is sick – _

_I don't care,_ he says. _You will not speak to her again._

_She is dying._

_Did a doctor tell you that?_

He is as precise and as perfect as ever. My fingers writhe nervously. I bite my lip, stare at my lap. _No, Neji._

_Then you don't know for a fact that she is dying._

_I can – I can tell._

_You can't tell anything, Hinata._

That spike again, rapid as a dart. I gasp with the pain, squeeze my eyes shut. He hates me. I know that much. Otherwise he would not hurt me like this.

_You will not speak to Sakura Haruno again. Do you understand me, Hinata?_

I hate my weakness. But I cannot hate him.

I look outside. The wind is rising. _Yes, Neji,_ I say. _I understand._

* * *

Naruto

We were both waiting for the storm to break, her sitting outside on the veranda and me wandering through the house with a caged sense of confusion. Every hallway I passed she watched me, her face hanging on the walls in great framed photographs. Somewhere on the second floor I sat myself down opposite a wall-sized window and stared out into the semi-darkness. I could see her on the floor below, sitting with candles all around her and roses in her hair.

The light fell across her back. She was drinking, heavily, but she managed to give it a tragic note, a lingering beauty. I could not help watching her.

Did I love her?

I suppose I did. But I cannot speak too much of it, it is not something I know well. I worked at a taxi club; love does not survive in such places. Like a flower choked by weeds – when it comes it is fleeting, temporary, flaring up like a candle. For a bright, beautiful moment there is light; you can see; the shadows flee from you, and you know as a quintessential truth that you are alive, so brilliantly alive –

– but candles do not last. Sooner or later, they burn out. All it takes is one breath, one glance, and the beauty combusts, it dies, it drowns itself.

Her candle was dying and I knew it. Every drop of wine she downed was testament to that, the two of us separated by two metres and a sheet of glass. We were the same, in that way. Identical. Separated by Sasuke and what he wanted from us.

A prostitute – what does a prostitute know of such feelings? We have given everything that we have away to others. We have no right to take.

But I had taken Sasuke from her.

I closed my eyes, felt the emptiness pervade through my body with each beat of my heart. Behind my eyelids I could still see Sasuke, his cold aloofness a silver light in the darkness of his eyes, and the undefined feelings that I felt for him grew like a foreign disease.

What was I to him? Why had he brought me here? I didn't know him and he didn't know me. I was viewing him through fog.

Because if you take something – you are not the one who feels the loss. If you take something from someone else, you have won.

But Sasuke Uchiha had a way of warping things. With him in the equation the world was nothing but duality, everything was duality, everything was indistinct.

I had taken Sasuke from her – but I did not feel the victory, because there was no victory to feel.

Only emptiness.

Behind my eyelids, I could still feel his dark, cold gaze. I did not cry – as she did, with the candles burning low – because I knew that even if I did, the tears would not wash away the image of his face from my mind.

* * *

Sakura

I heard the garage door open. Close. He was parking inside today, a rarity. Front door. Open.

I sat and waited. One of the candles went out. I took it into my hands like a child, and the wax caked over my fingers like a second skin.

I didn't hear him enter the house, because Sasuke prided himself on his silence. But I felt him behind me in the doorway, his shadow falling across the timbered floor. Silent.

I had my sunglasses on. My back was to him. He would not see my tears.

_You're home,_ I said evenly.

_Yes._

_How was work?_

We were going through the motions, a ritual we had followed with clinical precision since our marriage. A desperate snatch at normality.

_Hn._

_I haven't made dinner yet, I – _

_Where's Naruto?_

I closed my eyes. The second candle went out.

_I don't know, _I told him. _Why don't you check the kitchen?_

He waited, but I didn't give him what he was waiting for. Finally, he said, _What's with all the candles?_

_I like them._

I put the first candle down, stared at my fingers. The wax was smooth and had hardened into a white shell. I scratched it off slowly, keeping my head down and my face turned away.

_You like them,_ he repeated. I could hear the smirk in his voice, and it hurt. A third candle spluttered and went out. _I don't believe that, Sakura._

_Why is he here,_ I asked quietly.

_Who?_

_Don't pretend you don't – !_

I stopped, calmed myself, decided I would not give him what he wanted. I would not yell, scream, play the part of a slighted wife. I would not allow him that victory over me.

_Naruto,_ I said finally. Softly. The sarcasm I kept within my tone, because it was a sense of denial, a sense of cold-hearted dignity. _The one you... saved... half a month ago._

_I like him._

_If you're doing it just to spite me – _

_Not everything is about you, Sakura,_ he said then with a taunting smile. _You like your candles – I like Naruto. It's the same principle._

He turned from the doorway and started to leave.

_What, like Itachi liked Shisui?_ I bit out viciously, desperate. Anything to get him to stay. _I'll pray for him, then. Maybe this time no-one will get killed._

He stopped.

I couldn't help myself. Baiting the lion.

_But then again, his parents are probably dead already, so that shouldn't be a problem._

And then I thought to myself, Three, two...

His fury broke upon me like a wave crashing onto rock. One moment he was in the doorway; the next he was right there beside me, and he grabbed my shoulder and yanked me around to face him. He was strong. I cried out with the pain – trembled against his anger like a leaf in the storm – and my dress tore at the shoulder, ripped at the seams and fell away from my skin.

_Don't – _

_You will never say that again, do you hear me, Sakura?_ he hissed.

_I – _

He shook me. Dragged me to my feet and slammed me against the railing of the veranda, forced me to face him. My back against the single beam – as if my spine would break, give way under his black anger – and I stared up at him, eyes wide, lips parted, shaking, terrified.

_Sasuke – _

_Shut up,_ he growled. _Don't you dare mention Itachi again. Never._

_No, let go of me – !_

He ripped my sunglasses from my face. They fell to the ground, and I screamed as if he'd thrown me instead.

_No, no, no, let go – _

_Look at me._

_I can't – _

He grabbed my chin and forced me, my hands pushing uselessly at his chest. My torn dress flapped in the wind. And even as I stared at him, at his pale face and dark, dark eyes – the terror in me quivering like flame – all I could think was, How beautiful he is, how beautiful when he is angry...

_You will never mention Itachi again, Sakura,_ he whispered then, and still his beauty roared bright as wildfire. _I'm warning you. A single breath of Itachi to Naruto and I will – _

_Let go – _

_You listen to me – _

_Let go,_ I sobbed, not caring now if he saw the tears, not caring – _please, please, I promise, I promise anything – _

_Not a word._

_Yes, yes, I promise – please – _

He pushed away from me as if I disgusted him, let go of me. I collapsed to the floor, trying to hold the scraps of my dress together, my tears hot on my face – and still, even then, with him watching me with those cold, cold eyes – unfeeling, inhuman, I was nothing to him at all, nothing –

– he was so beautiful that I loved him, I loved him, oh God, I loved him...

He turned to leave again. I reached out to him from the floor.

_Pity me, Sasuke,_ I cried then in agony, my voice broken and not entirely mine. _Pity me, please, please pity me..._

Anything – anything – to make him stay.

He looked at me. I searched his eyes with a frantic need, but there was nothing there to find.

_Go to bed, Sakura,_ he said.

I closed my eyes as he left. And when I opened them again, he was gone, I was alone, the wind rose – and all the candles went out.

* * *

Sasuke

Naruto was watching from the doorway.

His eyes were unreadable. He shifted to let me pass.

_She loves you,_ he said.

I didn't look at him. _She loves my money._

_If that's all you have to give her, then that's all she has to love._

I turned to him. But he was already gone, and I could not ask him what he'd meant.

* * *

Temari

He was right, it was in the papers. I didn't have to wait for the morning flood of The Australian and The Sunday Mail at my doorstep to find out; I found out in the best of ways.

At my office.

_Your father's dead, Temari,_ the secretary said when I got to work the next morning. _Oh, and by the way, there are some Superannuation forms for you to sign._

_Thank-you, Takada,_ I said back. _Please don't cry for me, because that would ruin your makeup, and we wouldn't want that._

She was a cow, anyway. And pink lipstick didn't suit her.

It was a simple enough story – a house fire, the property too remote for the fire-truck to get there in time, the usual. They ended up having to run the front gate down with the truck, because it was locked and they couldn't get in. Father probably would've had a heart attack if he hadn't already died from smoke inhalation and what-not. Those gates had been specially imported from Italy, for Christsake. And the fact that the house was surrounded by bushland didn't help matters either – the eucalypts burned easily, crackled with the oil in their leaves.

Everything. Gone.

Arson, declared the newspaper. It must've been. If anyone had information they were to contact Crimestoppers.

As if anyone would; the house was smack-bang in the middle of Brookfield, the nearest neighbours were half a kilometre away. At night you were lucky if you could see your own hand in front of your face, there were no streetlights. Just dirt roads. Father used to complain about them every time he inspected the dust-prints on his Rolls.

When I got home Gaara was still there, lingering like a malevolent spirit.

_Did you do it?_ I asked him.

I still remember his answer, spoken in that calm, toneless way of his:

_Maybe._

* * *

Sasuke

I didn't know where he'd gone, the house was big and he didn't make any noise. I sat in my study and tried to work, but the window was open, the sky was dark, and I couldn't focus on anything. I wanted to go look for him but I didn't know what to say once I found him. The clock on the wall ticked on, the time steadily trickling by, water lost from a sieve.

It was hopeless. I put my pen down, covered my face with my hands in a vain effort to forget his eyes.

_Sasuke._

He was in the doorway. I looked up at him, properly. His blonde hair glowed watery-pale in the half-light, emphasized the hollow arc in his eyes. He was wearing his own clothes now – I'd carried his bags in barely an hour ago – and it was an orange hoodie pushed up to the elbows, dark pants. Something silver glittered familiarly around his neck. I looked away.

_There are no photos of them._

I looked at him again. _What?_

_Your family. There are no photos._

I didn't know what to say to that, so I settled for silence.

_Did you love him?_

_I don't know what you're talking about,_ I said.

_Itachi. Did you love him._

_He's my brother._

He didn't expect that, blinked at me with his long gold lashes. _Brother?_

He was probably the first person I'd met who didn't know about Itachi, but to me that was a blessing. I picked up my pen again, stared at it to stop myself from staring at him.

_I don't want to talk about him,_ I said. _When did Sakura come back?_

He ignored me. _Where is he now?_

_I said I don't want to talk about him._

_You can't run from it forever,_ he said quietly.

My eyes narrowed dangerously at him. _I'm not running from anything,_ I snapped.

_How did your parents die?_

I stood up so quickly my chair almost tipped over, and I could feel my eyes blazing. He watched me calmly, as if he'd expected me to be this angry. As if he'd wanted me to be angry.

_Don't,_ I warned him.

_Did your brother kill them?_

I threw the pen down. Something dark and poisonous gathered in me, coldly furious, feeding on my warmth like water leaching through bedrock. The emotion was so sudden that it startled me with its ferocity. That was how it was – Naruto had a power over me – he called out things from deep within me that I didn't even know existed, emotions I had never had the capacity to feel.

_I don't want to talk about it,_ I ground out frostily. _I have work to do._

He came closer. _Sasuke._

_Don't._

_Sasuke, I know – _

_You don't know anything,_ I blazed. _You don't know anything about me, Naruto._

_Did your brother kill them?_

_No._

It sounded like the truth. It felt like it. Perhaps he would not know.

* * *

Naruto

It was as if there were twin candles in his eyes; the way he stood was defiant, a sullen sort of beauty in the way his eyes glared out at me from behind the black wisps of his hair. There were no pictures of him in the house either, but the very air rang with his essence, the very air breathed him.

_Did your brother kill them,_ I said.

For a moment I thought he would open to me. But then he said, _No._

It was a lie. Both of us knew it, as surely as the sun did rise.

I nodded, looked away. The only light in the room came from his desk lamp and the cold glitter in his eyes. _I understand,_ I said.

_You don't believe me._

_You don't believe yourself,_ I pointed out softly.

_How would you know what I believe and what I don't?_

I looked at him. _You __**do**__ love him._

_I don't – _

_Then why do you lie for him?_

He paused. I waited. Time seemed to halt under the intensity of his gaze. After a moment he went to his desk again, opened a drawer. He had a wallet in there and he flicked through it, counted out ten hundreds. I took a step back from him. We'd been down this road before.

_Here,_ he said fiercely. He held the money out to me. _Get out. Get out of here. Take the money and go._

_A thousand?_

_What I paid for you. Take it and go._

_Wasn't it fifty-five thou – _

_I lied,_ he said viciously. _You weren't worth that much to me. I paid one grand and took you home. Now get out._

I stared at him. There was a wild frenzy in him, a hatred which did not pass his eyes – like a dream it bent inward, focused like a beam of light through a magnifying glass, burning no-one but himself.

_You loved him,_ I said again.

_Get out!_

_And he killed your – _

_No!_ He took a step towards me, and suddenly he seemed to change, the hatred twisting a convoluted knot into the way he moved, the bitterness that entered his tone. _No, Naruto. It wasn't Itachi. It was me. I killed them. It was me who killed my parents._

_What – _

_**I**__ killed them!_ His voice was low but the venom did not fade. _It was Sasuke Uchiha who pulled the trigger in the end. It was __**me**__!_

I took another step back. Suddenly, the frenzy in his eyes terrified me. _I don't believe – _

_Why? Why don't you believe me?_ He reached me and his eyes bored a white-hot fire into mine. _I can even tell you how it happened, if you want. Killing is easy, Naruto. As easy as blowing out a candle – _

_Sasuke – _

– _all it takes is – one – wish – _

He broke off abruptly, turned his face away. He was shaking, from rage or tears, I couldn't tell which. A few seconds passed, slipped through the air like grains of sand through an hourglass. I was only half a metre from him. With his figure in the lamplight I thought of a statue, a lonely imitation of life in marble, lost in the darkness and hurting.

His passion enveloped me like a cloud. And I felt his hatred brush my skin, soft like the wings of a giant moth; and suddenly, I understood.

_Sasuke,_ I said again.

He bristled at the gentleness in my voice. _I don't want your pity,_ he spat.

_Sasuke._

_Fuck off!_

_It's alright._

_How is it alright?_ he snarled, still not looking at me. _How would you understand? You're nothing but a common whore._

It stung – but I knew he did not mean it.

I reached out to touch him.

He flinched away from me as if he had been burned.

_Don't touch me,_ he hissed blackly.

I didn't speak. Reached out again.

He gave an enraged sort of cry, caught my wrist and twisted it hard. The pain shot up my arm and I bit my lip to stop myself from crying out.

His eyes met mine. He was waiting for me to hurt him back, waiting for me to anger. And I knew then – it was only a tiny piece, a fragment of understanding – why he was who he was, why his world spun the way it did.

So I did not speak to him. There are some times when nothing needs to be said – when the silence means more than anything else, when silence is all you need to say.

* * *

Sasuke

He didn't speak. And that was what struck me, the fact that he did not try to say anything at all. He did not try to alter me. I looked into his eyes.

I was hurting him. But still he said nothing.

_I told you not to touch me,_ I bit out.

His eyes were sad, so very, very sad. _Sasuke,_ he said again.

I let go of him.

For a moment he just stared at me. And then he moved forward one last time, and pulled me to him.

_No._ I fought him. _No! I wanted them to die. I wanted – I wanted them to – _

_Don't speak._

_I – _

_Don't speak._

And then everything in me gave way, everything just dissolved into nothing. Like the collapse of a house of cards – suddenly there was nothing left, as if someone had laid me bare before a searchlight. I didn't know the tears were there until I felt the wetness on my cheeks. And still he held me, just held me, not speaking, and I felt as if I would die, because surely this was not real, surely –

_Naruto,_ I whispered, my eyes squeezed shut. _Naruto._

_It's not your fault,_ he said.

_Please don't hate me,_ I whispered.

He didn't speak. And I knew then that he'd seen me, that he knew me. It was what Sakura could never do – because she didn't love _me_, she loved an illusion of me, a Sasuke Uchiha who had long since died and left the world.

He held me – silent – and I was so grateful. But I did not voice it, because he did not need me to speak, and the silence was far more beautiful than anything I could find it in me to say.

* * *

Naruto

We made our way from the study to the bedroom, still soundless, and he closed the door. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him.

He wanted me: I could feel his desire smouldering with his silence. And yet he didn't follow me to the bed – simply looked at me from his place against the opposite wall, wordless, as if he was seeing me in a different light.

I waited for him to speak. There was something I needed to tell him but I didn't want to be the one to shatter the comfortable silence between us.

Finally, he opened his mouth.

_I don't understand why – _

He stopped, as if the words had come out wrong. I waited.

_Do you think I'm a bad person, Naruto?_

_I cannot judge you,_ I said softly. _You can only judge yourself._

Another pause. And then, suddenly: _Do you love her?_

I blinked in surprise. His eyes were sharp and piercing – this time he was reading me, and reading truth.

I was too tired to lie. _Yes,_ I said. _I love her._

He nodded. And then I waited for him to come to me on the bed, waited for him to kiss me and take what I knew he wanted –

– but instead he opened the bedroom door again. There was no rebuke in his voice, only a soft understanding, like the slow fall of senescent leaves.

_Good night then,_ he said. And then he walked out and closed the door, and left me to myself in the darkness.

* * *

Hinata

The phone rings and I jump, put down my book. I am in a haze, the words of Shakespeare have painted my eyes a delirious plethora of shades and hues that I cannot put down in writing. The phone is a harsh, citrus squawk. I pick it up.

_Hell – _

_Hinata, can I come to your house?_

It is Sakura. My eyes grow wide.

_I – uh, Sakura, how are y – _

_Please,_ she begs. I can hear her tears. _Please, Hinata._

I want to say yes. But Neji is watching me from a photograph on the wall, and I cannot bring myself to say it.

_I'm sorry,_ I say. The regret is a terrible lump of black coal in my chest. _I'm sorry._

I have no choice. I hang up on her.

* * *

Naruto

I woke up alone in Sasuke's bed, burning. It was nearing midnight and the shadows were drowsy, impermeable, thick veils of opium in the heavy night air. Outside the clouds obscured a pale sliver of moon, the light a clear luminescence against the silhouettes of houses and trees. I got up out of bed.

I went to the door and I went out. The house was big and I didn't know my way. Two corridors away, I found a closed door.

I went in. It was a bedroom. He was sleeping.

For a moment I stood by the door, watching him. And then I went to the bed, knelt beside it so that I was level with his up-turned face. He didn't stir, slept on.

And still, I was burning.

I leant forward and kissed him once on the mouth. He woke against me – I could taste his surprise on my lips – and for a long moment there was nothing but his confusion and my desire. But then – slow, as if the world had turned lethargic with the night-time – his hand went to the back of my neck, pulled me to him. I let him draw me into the bed and under the covers. He was warm and his tongue was comforting inside my mouth. His hands went to my pyjama top.

_Naruto,_ he breathed.

I didn't want him to speak. I didn't want to be reminded of all the things I needed to say to him. So I kissed him again, just to distract him, just to distract myself. And when he undid the buttons on my top I didn't pull away, fought the urge to turn from him.

He kissed my cheek and then a smooth, soft line down my jaw to my neck. I closed my eyes. He was gentle with me and I did not know what he wanted me to do. It was strange – a prostitute not knowing what to do – but I was burning, and that emotion was real.

And prostitutes know nothing of what is real.

We do not simply live in the shadows, we _are_ the shadows. Gentleness is not something we understand; we are as helpless in the face of it as a lamb before lions, sinners before God.

_Wait,_ I said then, pulling away. _Sasuke, I need to tell – _

He silenced me with another kiss, more demanding this time, more impatient. He didn't want me to speak. I felt as if I would tear in two. I pulled away again and he scowled at me.

_Naruto – _

_I can't love you._

There. I'd said it. It was done.

His fingers trailed over my stomach. His eyes were elusive, never lifting quite enough to meet mine. _What?_

_I can't love you. I can't. _I took a deep breath, looked away. _I'm sorry._

_Because you love her?_

That wasn't really the truth but I couldn't provide a better reason. _Yes. I suppose that's why._

He lay there then, on his side, watching me on the bed beside him. His hand was still on my belly, my top undone. For a moment I thought that he was going to get out of bed and leave me, but then he reached for the waistband of my pants. His eyes were opaque. Utterly unreadable.

_What are you – _

_Isn't that what you came here for?_ he said quietly.

I blushed and turned my face away in shame. But I didn't stop him when he pressed a hand against my groin, didn't stop the sharp intake of breath that came with it. He shifted closer and I tilted my face up to meet his lips but he didn't kiss me, didn't look me in the eye. Instead he pushed my pants off my hips.

I closed my eyes. It was easier for the two of us that way.

* * *

Sasuke

I couldn't kiss him, for some reason I just couldn't. It felt like fraud somehow. He didn't want me in that way and I told myself that I felt the same. When he turned his lips up for me I looked away.

When he closed his eyes against me I felt as if I were being ripped apart.

And so I didn't say anything – let my own pain bottle in my chest, let it simmer there like the head of a poisoned arrow. I moved onto him and let my fingers ghost down his chest. He didn't stop me. I leaned up again to undo my shirt.

I stopped halfway when I realised that it didn't matter.

His skin felt hot against mine, and when I bent down to press my mouth against the hollow of his throat I felt his pulse beneath the smoothness of his skin. Not for the first time I wondered at his vulnerability, at how simple it would be to bite down and draw blood. His hands came up and slipped underneath my shirt, fingertips combing lightly up my back.

When they brushed my wounds – those eight parallel lines, almost hypnotic in their symmetry – neither of us said a word. He tried to kiss me again. I avoided him, pushed his shirt off his shoulders.

It was dark. The moon trembled in the air, raced up his skin in glimmering pale lines like the fronts of a silver fire. His shoulders stood out in bold relief, the curves simple but elegantly so. Dreamlike – alien – and so, so achingly beautiful.

I couldn't stop myself.

_Naruto,_ I whispered. _Naruto, I – _

He reached for me. I wanted to stop him but my desire wouldn't let me.

* * *

Naruto

I was crying.

The kind of crying which happens behind your eyes, tears catching in your throat, resounding like bass deep within your chest. When your eyes are burning and your heart is burning and your whole body is burning, because this is the power of desire, this is the power of sin.

You have sinned and you are burning for it. Such is the way of these things.

And even as I reached out to him, pulled him to me so that I would not have to look at his eyes; I knew – someplace within me, like a tiny kernel of half-buried truth – that I needed him, that I wanted him, that if I did not love him then I loved some part of him that I didn't understand, because never before, never, never –

– had I given myself away to someone, as I gave myself to him that night.

And it was far from perfect – because he didn't know what to do, and I didn't know either, and it was natural and difficult and undeniably painful – but it was what we were reduced to in essence, the bare truths of ourselves. When he entered me I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain and bit back my whimpers, caught at his shoulder as if I'd been struck blind.

And I'd thought, Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasuke.

His eyes were like twin mirrors, and I couldn't bear to look in them. I kept my eyes closed. Breathed through his thrusts as if through pain. And even as I burned I wanted more, I wanted him, there was nothing else but his body and his eyes –

It was when we were both just about to come that he finally kissed me. Perhaps that was his way of victory. I couldn't tell. That night, I couldn't find it within me to care.

And as the pleasure overwhelmed us finally, his mouth was all I could attend to; his mouth and his desire and the taste of his lips on mine, a sweet finality. I didn't realise that I was crying until he pulled away, kissed the wetness from my cheeks.

It was over. Finally over.

I couldn't stop the tears. I pushed him gently off me and turned away, and there was an unspeakable grief weighing heavy as the moonlight in my stomach.

* * *

Sasuke

He was crying.

_Naruto,_ I said.

He turned away from me. Didn't meet my eyes.

_I'm sorry,_ he whispered to the cold night air. _I'll... try harder next time._

* * *

_I took my love down to Violet Hill_

_There we sat in the snow_

_And all that time, she was silent still_

_So if you love me, won't you let me know...?_

(Coldplay: _Violet Hill_)

* * *

**A/N: Ha.**

**Finally. I've been waiting to get that Chapter out of me for a while now.**

**I know what you guys are going to say: that I'm morbid, depressed, messed-up, etc. etc. Well, I'm not actually any of those things in real life, but that just happens to be my current writing style. I go through various writing "moods" and this is just the "mood" I'm in at the moment. Hope you don't mind too much. (And anyway, this fic is **_**supposed**_** to be angst.)**

**I've attempted to provide a bit more depth and complexity to my two protagonists in this Chapter, tried to flesh out their characters a bit more. If the yaoi scene wasn't all slick-schick-n'-bang, it's because I didn't feel that they were at that emotional standing yet. Sorry if that was what you were waiting for, but they were only on the rape!-level two days (in the story) ago, and it's difficult to have fantastic swingin' sex with a guy who's only just raped you, even if you identify with him and what-not.**

**Um... was there anything else I wanted to say? Ugh, can't remember. Gah.**

**Anywho, please review. I tried so hard for this Chapter, the least you can do is write me a review. What you liked, didn't like, improvements, you guys know the drill.**

**Love you all! Mwah!**


	8. Firefly

**A/N: Sorry for the late update, I was... reading **_**After Dark**_** by Haruki Murakami. Searching for inspiration, ha. So if you catch any hints of Murakami's style/surrealism in this Chapter... well...**

**My grateful thanks to ****skyglazingMaro, ClickRed, SqueakKills, hitsugayasuga, RomanceLuver09, notperfectXbutXhonestcritic, Wing of Darkness, monkeyface17, pat, RASENGANXD, Broken Sexed Up Bloody Kitten, Patet, Kyorose, Blood Zephyr, xXPixiexxStikXx, Michelle, OvenBased, Vivid Impact, EienKohaku, StreetRacerSakura, fan girl 666, elveljung, OrangeSpiral, hollowsmile, sleevelessgloves, pinktears, .Kumori-, poke-the-kitty, losethemask, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, Caranina, Inu-bitch, and roar303!**

**And thank-you also to my reviewers for **_**Laudanum:**_** Kisses, HilariousConspiracy, JaRyse, Asian Tinkerbell, orange sheep of the flock, Silencer-Silent Ravencroft, EllaCrain, hitsugayasuga, miskie27, cardcaptor111, KittyBlue, sha La La. oh my-my, Kilito, Lenneko-chan, RomanceLuver09, Forest of Fearful Temptations, .Gaara-, Queer Valgarity (I'm sorry, I've just realised that I've been spelling your name wrong all this time, as **_**Queen**_** Valgarity! Eep!), lom, Acherona, losethemask, and pinktears!**

**Hope you like this Chapter, and please review! **

* * *

**Eight: Firefly**

0-0-0

_Why must fireflies die so young?_

(Grave of the Fireflies)

0-0-0

Sasuke

Run, run, all you can do is to run. Catch their hand and pull them with you, as if the earth is breaking apart behind you, and if you do not run you will break with it. Where will you go? You do not know. But the motion itself, the act of running, it is so much better than standing still. If you run your shadow stays behind. If you still, perhaps it will still too. Perhaps it will catch you.

So when you run, you do not look ahead. You look behind, always behind, afraid that the shadows will reach you. You run blind. The wind carries you. And after a while you forget who you are, and you forget where you are supposed to be going, because it does not seem to matter any more. All that matters is to keep running. Forever.

And so you run, you run, you catch him and you run...

Perhaps one day you will stop. Perhaps one day the shadows will not matter. Perhaps one day you will be able to look up again, turn your eyes away from the frozen ground, and run without looking back.

Perhaps.

But for now, the shadows are everything. And he runs with you, because you have caught him now, he is your firefly, and you have sealed the jar.

* * *

Gaara

It would have been easy to kill her. The curve of her jugular tempted me, that hollow tube of elastic fibre, human flesh and human muscle pulsing with the contractions of a human heart. It fascinated me; that one single tube keeping her alive. Without it she was nothing. That one tube made her human.

At night when she was asleep in her room I slipped in and watched her in the dark, the rhythm of both heart and lung steady as the seasons, an inhuman constancy in each human breath. There was blood in that neck of hers, blood beneath the marble-smooth skin, blood within that hollow pulsing tube of elastic fibre.

Blood. Her blood. Human blood.

At night she locked her bedroom door. Perhaps she thought I would kill her. She had always been smart, she knew me. There was nothing on the surface to show; she still smoked and smirked and swore at me as she had done all her life; but she was afraid.

One night I slipped into her room again, slipped past her lock and stood beside her bed while she slept.

Her chest rose and fell beneath the covers. A pattern, a clue perhaps, incessant and irresistible like the roll of silent thunder. As fragile as porcelain, just begging to be broken.

I flicked on my lighter.

Perhaps I would burn her, just to watch the flames lick up the sheets. Perhaps I would hold her underwater one night, watch the shuddering light play out on her skin.

Perhaps I would slit her throat. Watch her warm, warm blood, her wide, wide eyes.

Perhaps.

I took a step closer with the lighter in my hand.

She opened her eyes. She wasn't asleep.

_Get out of my room,_ she said.

I didn't say a word. Flicked the lighter off again. Slipped back out the way I'd come, silent as the air, and closed the unlocked door soundlessly behind me in the dark.

* * *

Naruto

She was gone in the morning. Her suitcase was untouched. Out on the veranda the candles sat squatly in great, broken rings. I debated bringing them back inside but couldn't bring myself to touch them, sat by them instead and stared out at the sky. The crows were flocking, sharp black shapes, the shadows of sunken ships. There were no clouds.

He found me there, just sitting. There was nothing else for me to do. His gaze was pricking the back of my neck and I let it be. Finally, he shifted against the doorway and his lean shadow played out over the wooden floor, skimmed over my back like a phantom hand.

_What are you doing? _he asked.

_Nothing,_ I said. Truthfully.

_Where's Sakura?_

_I don't know._

_You didn't see her?_

_She was gone when I got here._

He seemed to contemplate that. Searching for a hidden meaning. _Hn._

_Don't you have to go to work?_

_Don't sound so hopeful,_ he said then, and sat down next to me. I hadn't expected it and suddenly, for some reason, his presence unnerved me. _I think I'll skip work today. Shikamaru can take care of things._

_Right._

We lapsed into silence. It was awkward but neither of us knew what to say. My mind was on last night and I knew his was too; but what had happened was too recent, too raw. I was glad he did not ask any questions.

_Were you planning on doing anything today?_

_No._

His hair obscured his eyes. _I want to take you somewhere._

I turned to him. _What?_

_I want to take you somewhere. Today._

His use of _take_ seemed ambiguous. I didn't know what to think.

He misread my silence. _You don't want to go?_

_Go where?_

_Somewhere. You'll know when we get there._

He spoke as if I had a choice. I pulled my shirt closer around me and chewed on my lip, avoiding his eyes. In the daytime they were even darker than usual, the sunlight seeming to dodge them, skirt around as if afraid of drowning. Dark depths collapsing under their own weight. Looking into them was like courting death. It was safer to look away.

_I'll go. When do you – _

_Now._

It startled me. _Now? You want to go now?_

_Now's as good a time as any. Unless you were waiting for something?_

_Or someone?_ he seemed to imply.

He didn't trust me. His eyes showed nothing, reflected my gaze dutifully back at me untouched. Last night's essence haunted somewhere around the curve of his lips.

_I don't know where Sakura is,_ I asserted again.

He shrugged. _Whatever. I don't care. _

The crows were still circling. Hunting. Their wings sliced through the morning air. Their vertigo was dizzying, their eyes searching for the seams separating the sky. They were the same shade of black as Sasuke Uchiha's eyes.

He looked at me. He held out a hand, and his eyes were one with the crows, reeling, searching, fleeing.

_Let's go,_ he said again. And I knew I couldn't argue.

* * *

Temari

He called me on a Wednesday night. I was in the middle of a shower. Half-tempted to let whoever it was (probably some Indian telemarketer) hang on the line while I washed my hair, but then I remembered that Gaara was in the house, and suddenly that didn't seem like a good idea at all. If he picked it up I'd probably end up sued for emotional damages – which, considering my piss-ass salary, wasn't exactly on the top of my To Do list. And so I shut the water off, grabbed a towel, and dripped my half-rinsed way to the phone in the kitchen.

Gaara was sitting at the counter. Staring at the phone. He didn't move to pick it up, and I wasn't sure whether I was glad or pissed off. When I got there he stared at me instead. I flipped him off and yanked the phone from its cradle on the wall.

_What?_ I snapped. _Hurry up, whoever you are. I'm in the shower._

Gaara blinked his eyes at me. Very calmly. As if to say, _You're an idiot. I'm going to kill you one day._

Little son of a –

_Am I speaking to a Miss Temari Sabaku?_

I recognised the long, flat drawl. It might almost have passed for normal speech if it wasn't so goddamn flat. As if someone had steam-rollered his voice box.

_No, you're not. Wrong number._

A pause. _It __**is**__ you._

_I'm not a Miss, I'm a Mrs. Was a Mrs. So you're wrong. Who did you get my number from?_

_Why do you want to know?_

_I'm going to slip some arsenic into their coffee tomorrow._

And Gaara's eyes were on me again, interested all of a sudden. Fucking sadistic bastard. I bared my teeth at him and he stared coolly back.

_I'm sure Google would not appreciate you poisoning one of their technicians, Mrs Sabaku,_ came that little voice of non-reason down the phone line.

He had a way of making the _Mrs_ sound exceptionally misplaced. Like tacking a Post-It note on the forehead of Venus de Milo.

(Which was probably what he'd intended.)

Smartass. Smartass. Goddamn, pissing smartass.

_Google? You Googled me for my number? Wow. I'm honoured. Ten points for originality, fifty points for effort._

A tiny pause while he thought it through. _You're taking the piss._

_What on earth gave you __**that**__ idea?_ I said in my most cloying, sickeningly innocent voice.

He paused again. And then, _Oh, I don't know. Just a shot in the dark, I guess._

We probably could have kept at it, exchanging barbs like they were cyanide pills, if I had not realised at that moment that Gaara was no longer in the kitchen. And the first thought that went through my head then was, Oh shit. He's gone gallivanting off on one of his out-of-house trips again. Probably killing kittens.

_Killing kittens?_

And then my brain went, Oh shit. I just said that out aloud.

_Yes, he's out killing kittens,_ I improvised wildly_. And his name is Rocky Balboa._

He didn't buy it. Shikamaru Nara was no gender-reversed Paris Hilton (and thank God for that). But he let it go, because he really didn't know who I was, and to be completely fair I didn't know him either.

_Are you free tonight?_

My hair was dripping into my left eye. _Depends._

_On what?_

_On why you're asking._

_Dinner at my place?_

I rolled my eyes, even though I knew he couldn't see me. _I'm busy,_ I said.

Shikamaru Nara was smart. He could read between the lines.

Cleared his throat. And I could feel his smile, twisting down the phone line.

_Business meeting at my place, then?_

I grinned. He'd finally caught on.

_Where do you live?_ I said.

* * *

_Stars open among the lilies._

_Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?_

_This is the silence of astounded souls._

(Sylvia Plath: _Crossing the Water_)

* * *

Hinata

I am strange tonight.

Something has been set in motion; I feel it acutely, an ache beneath the skin. When I look in my mirror at night I lean closer to stare into my eyes, searching for some difference in myself. Some difference in the world. Some consequence. I am disappointed.

But when I leave the bathroom I feel as if my image has not left with me. As if I have left some shard of me still on that glass, staring out from her plane into mine. The same eyes. The same searching. As if I have not been true to myself, and the girl behind the glass with the ghost-grey eyes knows it too, she understands and she disapproves.

She seems to ask me, What colour are you, Hinata?

And I cannot answer. For reason I cannot see myself. Not in that way. To my own eyes, I have no colour at all.

Neji tells me I am silver. The colour of fresh rain, the translucent scales of deep-water fish. Such a colour has no place on its own, it is weak, it is bending. It cannot create its own light; it catches the light of others. And Neji is my light, he is the white of stars and the virgin snow.

He saved me once. I do not question his whiteness.

And when I see the article in the newspaper that Sakura has put out, I do not question her either. If I am strange tonight, then perhaps she is too. We cannot perceive the truth of others unless we see their colours.

I avoid her name. I do not wish to see the orange any more. I do not wish to see her truth.

But I see the other name. Naruto Uzumaki.

And, strange as I am, he has no colour either.

* * *

Gaara

She came home late that night and she seemed animated. Alive. She didn't ask me where I'd gone, as if she'd forgotten I existed. She tore off her black scarf and threw it on the table, kicked off her black heels, and planted her hands on her hips.

Her green eyes were shining. _Ha,_ she said.

I didn't answer. She was wearing black and the neckline was low. The pale expanse of her throat shifted when she breathed.

_I got a story,_ she said then.

She wasn't talking to me. I didn't think she was.

_Sasuke Uchiha with a male escort. Now that's going to raise eyebrows._

The name struck a chord and I looked up sharply. It seemed to remind her I was there, and her face clammed up immediately.

_What are you staring at, you freak?_ she snapped in her normal tone, brushing past to take out her earrings. _Where were you all night, anyway?_

_Did you say Uchiha?_ I asked quietly, ignoring her questions.

_Get your ears checked. I'm not repeating myself._

_Itachi Uchiha?_

She gave me a look. _Sasuke. The younger one._

_He lives in Brisbane?_

_Where have you been in the last couple of years? _she sniped irritably, leaning across to grab a tissue. Her lipstick came off in a swathe of blood-red on white. _Ugh. This stuff is shit. I need to get Chanel._

_I thought he was dead._

_What, Chanel?_

_No. Sasuke Uchiha._

She gave a contemptuous snort. _You wish._

_I do._

She made a disgusted noise and threw the used tissue at my head. _You're insane. I don't know why I even put up with you._

_I don't know why I put up with you either,_ I said.

She stopped. Looked at me. Her green eyes trembled but her lips were firm.

_Why were you in my room last night?_ she asked.

The lighter was in my pocket. I could feel its bulge through the fabric of my coat.

_Just curious,_ I said.

She was afraid but she didn't show it. Her lips twisted and she turned away. That night, the door was locked again.

* * *

Sasuke

I took him to the park where I'd killed my parents.

I didn't tell him. We just walked down the tree-lined lanes, the jacarandas bending over us with their heavy branches, the scent of the grass rolling thick off the lawns. The river to our right, curving away like a glistening serpent, the chatter of sunlight loud on its smooth surface. He seemed distracted somehow as he walked beside me. Maybe the river reminded him of something. I did not ask. I did not feel I had the right to.

It was nearing noon. The sun was high and the heat hammered down slowly, so slowly it did not so much reflect off surfaces but rather passed right through them, soaked everything thoroughly in a sultry miasma. Under the leaves the air hung stagnant and stale. We picked our way soundlessly to the edge of the river and the heat followed us in droves.

For some reason he would not look at me. The bushes scratched at our elbows, hooked gnarled fingers into our shirts like London beggars. The sunlight made it hard to think. Despite it, I felt as if the world were dimming. Under the murmur of the river the darkness clamoured like forgotten souls.

_The river,_ I said. And that was all.

He nodded. This place was his as well. He looked down, away, into the bushes, as if he expected something to be hiding there.

I looked. There was nothing.

The ground was covered over with moth plants. The sunlight slanted across their feathery seeds, drenched them with an unearthly shade of diaphanous gold.

The moment was strange and I looked into his face. He did not feel real.

_The river,_ I said again. There was more, but for some reason I could not get the words out.

One of the seeds tugged itself from the moth plants, lurched into the air with an imaginary breeze. I watched as his blue eyes found it, watched as he took it into his hands. Trapped it with his fingers.

And then for some unspeakable reason his knees just gave out and he collapsed. It was as if he had suddenly just tired of himself, tired of life and tired of pretending he wasn't. I caught him at the waist just in time and steadied him.

_Are you alri – _

_I'm fine._ He pulled away, his face turned. There was a look in his eyes that I felt I was supposed to understand, but couldn't.

_Santa Claus,_ he said quietly then, a sad tone in his voice. It took me a moment to realise that he was referring to the trapped seed in his hand. _Make a wish before I let him go again._

Santa Claus. A wish.

So I wished. I opened my mouth and I wished, for the one strange thing that mattered most to me that morning.

_I wish for you to stay with me forever._

It didn't sound right coming from my mouth. His eyes flickered, as if he were reliving some fragment of a bad dream; but he said nothing, and he opened his fingers.

I watched. The Santa Claus floated away with the breeze, still drenched with the sunshine. The weight of my wish did not bend it in the slightest.

* * *

Naruto

All I could think of was the fireflies.

Afterwards, in the car, he'd looked at me. He had the most beautiful eyes, and my heart ached just to see them.

_I told myself I would never make another wish after my parents died,_ he said.

I did not reply. The world blurred past the windows.

_Promise you'll never leave me?_ he said.

I said nothing. It was not my promise to make.

Wishes made aloud never come true.

* * *

Gaara

Sasuke Uchiha.

I sat opposite her as she worked, just watching the monitor light bleach across her skin. She was writing about that name. Every now and then she would pause and jam a cigarette into her mouth, struggle with the lighter while I stared. I made her nervous and, as the night wore on, her fingers began to shake.

_Go to bed,_ she snapped finally. It was two in the morning.

_I don't sleep,_ I told her.

She blew out a frustrated mouthful of smoke and glared furiously at me through it. _Gaara, I can't work when you're here. Go away._

_What are you writing about?_

_Sasuke Uchiha. I told you already._

_Let me read the article._

_Just fuck off, will you?_

I fell silent. Stared at her. After about ten seconds, her nerve broke.

_Fine,_ she grumbled, spinning the laptop around and throwing herself back in her chair. _Take a look, you fuck-ass. I hate you._

* * *

Sakura

(The candles, the candles, the candles were blowing out and I could feel them – )

I don't know why I did it.

But it doesn't matter, does it? Sometimes I think it doesn't and sometimes I think it does. It fluctuates. I think of a single particle suspended between two planes, unable to touch either, like the stroke of midnight. For some reason I do not feel like myself. I feel strange.

I look in the mirror and sometimes I don't recognise myself, sometimes I forget what I am doing. I forget who I am. But I see Sasuke's face behind the glass like a ghost, always. He is constant and I am not. I feel as if I am drifting away.

I feel like I must be dying. Not in the physical way, but in the real way. Like something fundamental has gone sour deep within you, the light that was always there is suddenly and surprisingly failing. It is not instant but the realisation is. Perhaps that is why God promises us our souls. Our bodies are mortal and they are forgotten.

That night I had only my torn dress on and I went to Shikamaru's. He was having dinner with someone, she had blonde hair and green eyes. The night would not let me breathe.

I fell down by the table and I cried.

* * *

Shikamaru

She did not seem herself, she seemed – I don't know. There was a wildness in her eyes that I had never seen there before. Her dress was dirty and ripped but she came in smiling and chattering, as if she had not a care in the world.

She wouldn't stop talking. I couldn't make sense of half the things she was saying, and I don't think she could either. It was as if she didn't need to breathe. Temari was sitting at the table.

She went up to the table and I opened my mouth to make the introductions. Before a single syllable had stepped past my lips she collapsed onto the floor beside Temari's knees, shaking.

She was sobbing as if her soul depended on it. I didn't know what to say.

_What happened?_ whispered Temari in a hushed sort of awe.

_Sasuke,_ the girl on the floor said. Her sobs wracked her shoulders and the air around her. _Sasuke, he – _

I took her and I helped her up. She seemed limp in my hands, as if something had sucked her dry.

There was something almost terrifying in Temari's eyes. A cruelty that was different.

_Tell me everything,_ she said, and pulled out a notepad.

* * *

_The night is only a sort of carbon paper,_

_Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars_

_Letting in the light, peephole after peephole – _

_A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things._

(Sylvia Plath: _Insomniac_)

* * *

Naruto

The next morning he went to work and I went out to walk the streets, the rich purple carpet of jacarandas crushed like dirt beneath my feet. The soft blossoms held a sorrowful air, mournful in their beauty. The dew beaded on their petals like tears. I drifted over them in a daze.

I don't know how long I wandered, but it was a wide-eyed, confused sort of wandering. It was as if the trees were flying past my eyes while I stood still, scrolling like a cinema screen, everything somehow moving but still staying weighted in the earth. People passed me and their faces blanked before my very eyes so that I could not remember any of their features, not even when I tried. There was a fluttering in my chest and I just wanted to find a quiet spot in the dark to cry.

After a while I found that I couldn't look beyond his eyes. They hovered behind everything like an echo, or perhaps double vision. Black and soulless like two stabs of ink.

I felt giddy and lurid. Perhaps I had a fever.

I found a park bench somewhere in Middle Park or Jindalee and I sank down into it, nuzzled myself back against the wood and closed my eyes. The world was spinning and it wouldn't stop.

I wished Sasuke was there but it wouldn't have made a difference, anyway. Sasuke didn't change things. Not much, and not in the way I wanted them to change. His face seemed far away in my mind and I had another strange, burning desire to kiss him –

Except, of course, he wasn't there.

I couldn't stand the loneliness. But when he was with me, the loneliness still would not go away. It didn't make sense – but then again, nothing between the two of us made sense.

When I lay back on the bench and propped my head up with my hands I could see the sky, and the clouds, and the dry fingers of tree branches reaching up towards them. As the clouds moved the world seemed to tilt with them. Vertigo.

I fell asleep.

When I woke it was dark again, and the clouds were moving still, except they were moving over the moon. The passed time disorientated me. I closed my eyes to escape it all and fell asleep again.

The next time I woke someone was sitting next to me on the bench and looking into my eyes.

It was a boy. He had green eyes, the kind that came with very cold ice, crystals crushed into a powder. He had deep red hair and a scar ran over his forehead. For some reason, I wasn't surprised to see him.

He didn't blink. His lips barely moved when he spoke.

_Who are you?_

And the moon curled over his head and I remembered seeing Sasuke like that, just leaning over me with his eyes so cold they numbed me, and I smiled.

_I don't know._

_You've been lying on this bench all day._

_Have I?_

He shifted and I saw that the scar on his forehead wasn't a scar at all, it was a tattoo. A word. In a language I did not understand. He saw me looking at it.

_It's in Kanji,_ he said.

That didn't help me. I reached out a hand and touched it, as if I expected it to dissolve under my fingers.

_What's Kanji?_ I asked.

_A form of Japanese. _He did not shift away from my touch. _Do you want to know what it says?_

I nodded.

_It means Love. It's the Kanji for Love._

_How pretty,_ I said, still half hazed from sleep. _Why do you have the Kanji for Love tattoed on your forehead? Not many people here would be able to read it._

There were dark lines around his eyes and I thought of smoke. I couldn't understand why he was staring not at my eyes, but at my throat.

_It doesn't matter if they can't read it,_ he said._ They make assumptions about me anyway._

That explanation seemed to make sense. I dropped my hand again. For some reason that single cryptic word on his skin seemed to embody something of him that I couldn't quite grasp, like water slipping through my fingers. I turned from him and tried to sleep again.

He wouldn't let me. _What's your name?_

I gave it to him freely. _Naruto Uzumaki._

His eyes didn't change. It was as if he'd known that was my name all along, he'd only asked me to make sure _I_ knew as well.

_You're the one living with Sasuke Uchiha._

_Yes. I am._

_He's married, you know._

The words were hard to say. _Yes. I know._

When he looked at me again I felt so vulnerable, and yet the danger did not feel real. As if I were facing a tiger in a cage, except I was insulated from the pacing green eyes by a single sheet of plastic Glad-Wrap.

_I heard that he saved your life._

_Yes,_ I said, not knowing how he knew. _He stopped me from jumping off a bridge._

His eyes seemed to pierce right through me. There was silence as he moved through the motions, analysing, interpreting, remembering. He was reading me so thoroughly I felt as if he were tearing me apart. Lying there on the park bench, I felt as if he were carving through me with a surgeon's scalpel.

Finally, he spoke again. His voice was soft.

_How long?_

I couldn't hide from him. _Three months,_ I whispered.

He nodded once. Just once. And then he blinked as if he were stepping out of a shower of rain.

There was no admonishment in his gaze. He was a stranger but he seemed to understand.

_You're very brave,_ he said then, very quietly.

_I'm not,_ I said, and the guilt welled up in me like a silver fountain. Guilt and fear (of myself, of myself, of myself and my reflection only) and a boundless despair. _I'm not brave. I'm not. I'm not._

_You are._

And then he stood and his face with its Kanji vanished out of my line of sight. The dark sky and the pale moon seemed different without him there to shade me. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and then I sat up on the bench.

He was gone. The street and the park were empty. It was almost as if I'd dreamed him.

* * *

**A/N: Riiiiight. Long Author's Note coming up.**

**That last bit narrated by Naruto was... weird to write. (Man, I seem to be using the word "weird" a lot these days, don't I?) I wanted a dabbling of surrealism to be there, but I always get carried away and I don't know whether it makes sense or not. Surrealism can be soooo annoyingly hard to understand. I hope I didn't confuse anyone.**

**(And if Sakura's little snippet is all strange and she sounds all I'm-on-a-different-plane-to-everyone-else, it's because she's having a breakdown and so she probably **_**is**_** on a different plane. Just so you know. Hope you enjoyed Gaara too, by the way.)**

**And yes, I've realised (maybe you did too) that my writing style over the last few Chapters has been evolving, to put it mildly. I don't know why – I'm very easily influenced by the books I read, so whenever I pick up a new work of literature it shows in my own writing as well. Like, there was so much Murakami in this story it just wasn't funny. And Sylvia Plath is in there too. And possibly a dash of Eoin Colfer (since I've been reading **_**Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox**_** – a book which is as confusing as hell, as I suppose all time-travel books are). I hope the style change has been for the better, although you can never keep everyone happy, but I always try my best!**

**Alright. Nearly finished. Just hang there, people.**

**I have put a poll up on my Profile Page regarding this story – I want to get a gauging as to how you guys **_**want**_** this story to end, versus how you guys **_**think**_** this story will end. Just to pique my curiosity and allow me to evaluate my own writing. Please vote!**

**I have also written a second One-Shot titled **_**Laudanum**_** (**A kiss with a stranger at a subway station has tragic consequences. SasuNaru. One-Shot, yaoi.**). Please also take a look at that!**

**And to top it all off – PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO REVIEW!**

**Oh, I love you all so much! This story is going to get crazy from next Chapter onwards!**

**You'll either really hate me or really love me – hope it ends up being the latter!**

**Alright, I'm finished now (it wasn't **_**that**_** bad, was it? haha). Adios!**


	9. Daphne

**A/N: Mmm, this is the Chapter when everything starts going crazy. Well – it's actually the next Chapter that has the majority of craziness, but this Chapter is… almost there.**

**(And ohmygoshIgot37reviewsforthelastchapteraloneandIam SOOO HAPPYYYYY!! XD)**

**Thanks a heap to Kochou-Yuki-Sakura, Positively, orange sheep of the flock, DesperateMeasures, xxMichiruxxKasagixx, EmmaTheSpottedBat, blueandorangesky10, witchbitch, xXkawaii-chanXx, -siarafaerie-101-miss, TaintedInk, leesoca, Wing of Darkness, Hispanic Tenshi, Blood Zephyr, fishbird, Patet, Michelle (did you get my email about your poem?), Vivid Impact, Leah182, imaxgoxgnomgnomxonxya, Inu-bitch, roar303, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, Kyorose, losethemask, fan girl 666, xXPixiexxStikXx, CaLL me rEd-Ew, StreetRacerSakura, Caranina, frozenfire593, OrangeSpiral, elveljung, pinktears, balakafalata, PotatoBeliever, Broken Sexed Up Bloody Kitten, and jureez.**

**And thanks to my reviewers for **_**Fairytale**_**: skyglazingMaro, PotatoBeliever, starchain, Dawn Ruichen, Positively, RomanceLuver09, ana, pinktears, Maeve Fantaisie, LadyLapisLazuli, , and Corn!**

**Please please review this Chappie! It's my birthday on the 27****th**** (i.e. tomorrow) so... please? (haha!)**

* * *

**Nine: Daphne**

0-0-0

_The nymph continued her flight, and left his plea half uttered._

_And even as she fled she charmed him. _

_The wind blew her garments, and her unbound hair streamed loose behind her._

_So flew the god and the virgin: _

_He on the wings of Love, and she on those of Fear._

(Apollo and Daphne)

0-0-0

Naruto

When I came home he was waiting for me. The television was on and the lights were off. It was dark but I could feel the weight of his eyes on my face, could feel his silent fury.

_Where. Were. You._

The answer came readily. _I was walking in the park._

_All day?_

_I fell asleep on a bench._

He shifted in the shadows and I thought of a panther, the imaginary light of his black eyes level in the dark. I could feel the split yawn of that gaze pouring on me like a numbed stream of acid. I sat down on the sofa opposite him and waited.

_I called you twice,_ he said.

_I wasn't home._

_I know._ The television program went to ads and suddenly I could see him. The garish light fell across the planes of his face like water. _I thought you'd run away._

_I didn't._

_You were going to. You almost did._

The conviction in his voice was startling. Beside us the television babbled senselessly on, a reminder of the outside world we'd forgotten. A channel from our stillborn world to another. The faces behind the glass screen were animated in the manner of mechanised puppets and wooden dolls.

He reached out and turned it off.

I was tired. I didn't want to prolong the argument and I got up.

His eyes were on me immediately. _Where are you going?_ he said sharply.

_Shower._

_No. I need to talk to you._

I sat obediently as if he'd flipped a switch. I stared at my hands in my lap. It was pitch-black and my fingers almost seemed to blend into themselves, melt under the half-hearted scrutiny of my eyes.

_Have you seen today's paper?_ he asked me from somewhere in the dark.

_No,_ I said dutifully. _Anything interesting happen?_

_Sakura put out an article._

My head snapped up. _Sakura?_

I couldn't see him but I knew he was scrutinising my reaction, trying to define me. He had a sort of all-presence, and in the darkness it almost took on a menacing undercurrent, rippling darkly beneath his cold exterior. It was the Sasuke whom I'd first met, one of many he seemed to embody. There was something in him that suggested a prowling animal, eyes glowing faintly predatory in the dark.

_You sound surprised,_ he noted.

I ignored that. For some reason, I felt the beginnings of a panic settle in my stomach.

_What did she say?_ I whispered. _Did she say anything about me? Did she mention my name?_

_You don't need to worry about your reputation,_ he said with a soft, bitter laugh. _She was aiming for mine._

It seemed like a double barb. Prostitutes had no reputation to think of in the first place.

It seemed necessary to verify. _So she did write about me._

_Of course. She's the poor, vulnerable wife cursed with an unfaithful, bastard of a husband. _His voice twisted cynically, warped itself like bad reception. _And you're the cruel, heartless man who stole me from her._

The unfairness of it all tore itself involuntarily from my throat. _But I didn't – _

_Do you think she cares about that? Honestly speaking, Naruto. Do you think she cares? I've known her for almost two years. She's a gold-digger and a witch. She's probably got her eye on the money._

I thought of the empty, blameless reaches of her green eyes – that day when she'd come home from Milan, and I was in the house waiting...

_I don't think she's the type to blame others,_ I said quietly.

He didn't say anything to that. But I did feel him stand, and suddenly the tips of his fingers traced silkily over my cheek.

_I don't care,_ he said to me. _I don't care what anyone thinks. I don't care about her. Just don't run away._

I turned just in time to see his stark silhouette in the light of the doorway. And I thought of the soft gold whiskers of the moth seeds, and the imprint of Love – black Kanji, a scar, and yet not – on pale skin.

_Don't worry,_ I said to no-one in particular. _I won't run._

And I thought, I don't care either. I don't care. I don't.

* * *

Sakura

I sit in Shikamaru's empty house. He has gone to work. I am here until I decide to leave.

I am wearing a coat that is not mine over my ripped dress. It has been eight hours but still I do not change out of it. I have not washed, either. Shikamaru has tried to persuade me to, but he does not know me that well and his words wash over my head, senseless and numb. I have not slept. It is almost as if I do not need to.

She has written the article, it will be published today. She has given me a copy.

When she leaves again I sit on the floor, the cool white sheets of paper spread neatly before me in a meaningless fan. I try to read but the letters squirm and writhe, they do not stay still. They are skewered on the page but they fight to be free.

_Stop,_ I tell them. But they do not listen.

I lean forward and put my hands flat onto the pages. I am trying to pin the letters down. There. They are pinned but now I cannot read them.

I can feel their black discontent vibrating up my wrists.

They terrify me. I lean back and shrink from their congealing blackness. For some reason they feel foreign and overpowering, as if I have never seen them before.

The article is not mine. The words are not mine. They do not belong to me.

They belong to _her_.

I grab the sheets and the letters mock me. When I tear the papers in half I can still feel them, twisting under my fingers like mica snakes.

* * *

Naruto

I didn't care.

(But I did.)

He was in the study and I was in Hell. I stood in the shower with the hot water pouring down and I couldn't understand myself.

A reputation.

What defines it? It is simply a concept, another scale created by humans to judge one another with. In that it is not concrete or exact, but it is merely a notion, it has no physical bearing on our lives at all. It is not like food, or water, or air. It is not even like that other scale we have drawn in the sand, morality. And yet wars have been fought over it, great things sacrificed to preserve it, so many lies told to keep it pure.

Perhaps it is because a reputation is immortal.

It is our name. The one thing we will carry with us forever, the one thing we will never be able to leave or cast away. We will never know another: our name is what we are born with, and what we have no choice but to stand by. When we die, no-one will remember a face or a voice or an influence – they will remember a name, two words carved into a headstone. And a name, a reputation, is like a mirror – it shows us as what we truly are, and when we look into it we have no choice but to see ourselves.

When you break it, it can never come together again.

The shards will not unite – like a heart, it cannot break and then become whole once more.

So when you destroy someone's reputation...

It is deeper than guilt. It is agony. Because you can give your life, but that mirror will always stay broken now, it can never heal.

You have no choice but to run. To run, run and forget, hope that in time that mirror in your mind will mist over and dissolve, like steam against cold glass...

Standing in Sasuke Uchiha's shower, with the water gurgling down the walls, I felt myself begin to cry.

* * *

Sasuke

He had been in the shower for an hour now. The pipes groaned in the walls like pack-horses. I could almost feel the house growing old, tiring, its life-force steadily rushing with the water from the shower.

And I wondered briefly whether Naruto had decided to drown himself.

It wasn't so farfetched. With Naruto, you could never tell.

I debated going to the bathroom to check, just in case – but then I decided that there was nothing to worry about. He had promised me he would not leave. That was good enough.

I would give him five minutes. If the shower still didn't turn off, I would go up to check.

The pipes heaved again. I looked away from them and down at my newspaper.

* * *

Gaara

_You stole my razor._

I looked away from my newspaper and up at her face.

She was sending me a death glare. The deadliest one from her arsenal. I brushed it off like a fly.

_Don't ignore me,_ she hissed then, her hands on her hips. _Gaara, stop reading that and listen to me._

_I'm listening,_ I said. But I didn't look up.

_Gaara, would you just put that thing __**away**__ – _

_No,_ I said simply. _I want to read it._

_You've already read it twice – !_

_Please stop talking,_ I told her. _You're boring me._

That stopped her. She bit her lip and stared at me for a long time.

Finally, she said: _Gaara, why did you do it?_

_I did not take your razor,_ I said.

It was true. I had not taken her razor. I had taken her needles instead.

She waved a hand dismissively. Her nails were a bright, arterial red. _I'm not talking about that._

I lifted my eyes and fixed her with a stare. She tossed it back at me, her glare singed the room. And I knew then that she was talking about Father.

_What would you like me to say?_ I asked her simply.

She blinked. _What would __**I**__ – ?_

_If I told you the truth, you would not believe me._

_Try me._

I took one look at her eager, fiery expression. And I said, _No._

_Why not – _

_You wouldn't understand._ And I left it at that.

She paused. When she tilted her head, her green eyes took on a coldness of their own. For a moment, I could've been looking in a mirror.

Eventually, she turned away. I caught the flash of light on red, red lips.

_I want those needles back by tomorrow,_ she said.

(And I saw the name staring up at me from the paper again. Naruto Uzumaki. Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto.)

* * *

Hinata

The photograph hangs on the wall of my room, silent as a cloud. It is edged in silver and it is black and white. If only the world was so simple. Every night before I go to bed I stand before it as if in ritual, my hands by my sides, and I let my eyes wander.

Sometimes, if I do not force it, the memories come back to me. Normally they take hours to conjure, and when they do finally come they are incomprehensible smudges of light and colour and sound, the palette of a tormented _artiste_. They seem to materialise before my eyes like spectres. I have reached out to them with my fingers before. They always vanish before I can touch them.

I always return to the reality of my room, with Neji's grey eyes peering at me coolly from the wall.

It is almost as if he is barring me. In the photo I am standing beside him, but I am looking to the side and half my face is in shadow.

He is not. He is never in shadow. His eyes confront the camera like the steel-grey sheen of a gun.

And I can never remember – there is something that I have done, and I cannot remember it.

I remember little scraps, the bright red of a lipstick, something silver, something black. No, it is white on black, sharp at the edges. Those colours seem crucial, the final pieces of a jigsaw, and I cannot find them anywhere in my mind.

There is something that I have forgotten. I bite my lip and I stare.

The photo gives me no clues. On the black and white surface, Neji guards me from the shade of grey like Charon before the Styx.

* * *

Sasuke

The sound of flowing water always made me think of Persephone.

Daughter of Demeter, in the vale of Enna where the sun never shone – where the Spring is unchallenged, and lilies strew the moist ground over like a thousand captured stars. Persephone – unwilling wife of Hades, queen of Erebus, torn from the Spring and plunged into the everlasting Winter of Hell; while her grieved mother Demeter haunted the earth for her daughter, searched far and wide for a flash of that flax-gold hair, that child-sweet smile...

There seemed something of that story which struck my heart, although I could not define what it was. Ever since Naruto entered my house – snatched from his sphere and brought into mine – I could not force that story from my mind.

That night, with the water roaring in the house like the wrath of the Styx –

I had promised myself that I would wait five minutes, but the seconds seemed to dilate even as I counted them. After only three I put my newspaper down. I had been reading Sakura's article again, and for some reason I felt that I should've been angry, but I couldn't force it out of me.

It was evidently not her writing. Somehow, that just seemed to obliterate everything, make any emotion completely pointless.

Upstairs, the water roared. I left the study with its bell-ring of copper light from the desk lamp, and made my way silently to the stairs. Without Sakura there was no-one to go through the house, sporadically turning on lights. The place was silent and forbiddingly dark. I didn't mind. Darkness seemed to suit me better.

Darkness – and the sound of the water raging on, and on, and on...

_Naruto, what are you doing?_ I yelled down the hall. _You out of the shower yet?_

There wasn't an answer, but the shower went off.

For some reason I felt relief, muted and numbing as a snowdrift. I was just turning to go back down the stairs again when I noticed something bright and silver glittering on the floor of the landing, sitting quiet and blank-faced as a diamond.

It was the window we had broken a week ago – or was it a day? A month? A year? – and no-one had yet swept up the glass. Not even Sakura.

And then I remembered that Sakura wasn't there.

The window had a jagged crack down one side, and then a wide sweeping plane of nothingness. It was like peering inside a cadaver. Outside, bugs hummed and whistled in the bushes. The moon looked seasick.

The shower went back on again.

Perhaps seeing that broken window reminded me of something, because as soon as the water started roaring again I felt my temper roar with it. Sakura – Naruto – each one's disappearance had pricked at me, events my mind dismissed as insignificant but ultimately (no matter how hard I tried to deny them) were not. I could not quite fathom it, but it was as if someone had boxed me in a wooden coffin and nailed down the lid.

I was stewing in my own old, sour air. There was nothing new to breathe.

_Naruto, get out now!_ I yelled. _Get out of the shower! Now!_

I listened but still the water kept flowing.

My hair kept falling into my eyes. I swiped it back and started down the hall towards the bathroom, my footsteps muffled by the carpet. Sakura tried to follow but I wouldn't look at her on the walls.

_Naruto!_

The bathroom door was unlocked. A tiny beam of light filtered out from underneath it. I waited.

_Naruto, I'm coming in._

There was a sound from inside, but it wasn't a word of any sort. It sounded like a grunt, or perhaps a stifled sob. I turned the doorknob silently and went in.

At first there was so much steam, I couldn't see a thing. The giant sink mirror was misted over like the eye of a great cooked fish. As were the glass shower doors. The steam fled past me and out the opened door. I squinted through the white masses and tried to locate the fan switch.

_Naruto, dammit, what are you doing?_

He didn't reply. There was another choked noise, and then the sound of something grating against skin.

The steam wouldn't clear. I swatted it from my eyes.

_Naruto?_

_I'm in the shower, _he said then. His voice sounded different.

_You've been in the shower for over an hour._

_I'm... I'm not clean yet,_ he said, rather strangely.

And then some of the steam petered out and I saw that there were two razor blades, laid out neatly beside the sink.

(And suddenly, like a jolt of lightning, I thought, Oh Naruto, you _didn't_ – !)

_You idiot,_ I whispered breathlessly to myself.

And I ran to the shower and I yanked the glass door open, and almost instantly the water sprayed out like a scalding jet and I hissed, ducked aside. He had the water on full blast and it was so hot it burned. The steam blinded me again.

_You – Sasuke – _

And there were hands shoving me out, roughly, and still I couldn't see anything at all. I fought back blindly as he tried to shut the shower door.

_Turn it off!_ I yelled at him. _Turn the fucking water – off – _

_I'm not clean yet!_ he yelled back shrilly, and the glass door almost closed, and I latched my fingers into the edge and pulled to yank it open again. He was strong and the door staggered between us. _I'm not clean yet, I'm not clean, I'm not __**clean**__ – _

_What the fuck are you on about!_

_I'm not – clean – _

I swore at him and let go of the door. It took him by surprise and he jerked backward, lost his balance in the shower. There was a muffled thump and I took the opportunity, yanked the door open, plunged into the shower and fumbled wildly around until I'd sliced the hot water off completely.

Instantly, the jet turned to ice. He yelped and tried to shove me away, but I grabbed his wrist and turned it to my eyes. My heart was thundering in my chest.

And I'd thought, Please no, you can't have, no, not now...

But the skin was unbroken. He had not slit his wrist.

(And that cynical voice in my head said, _Yet._)

I reached for the other one and that was fine as well.

_Let go!_ he yelled at me, in that same shrill voice that I didn't quite recognise.

He seemed surprised when I obeyed him. Fell back against the wall of the cubicle, slid down the glass until I was sitting on the floor, my breath coming in steadying rasps. My clothes were soaked. At that moment, I really didn't give a fuck.

I sensed him opposite me. When the steam finally dissipated I looked up and met his eyes.

He'd been crying. His blue eyes looked as if they had been fished up from the bottom of the ocean, two long-drowned orbs. He caught my stare and instantly buried his face in his hands, as if he couldn't find it within him to face me.

_Sasuke,_ he whispered. It was almost lost amongst the water.

His voice was normal now. Shaking. Husked and rough, wind through riverbank reeds.

_You – stupid – why do you have razors on the sink?!_ I shouted at him, but the motion clammed to the steam and seemed dead in the air. _What were you doing?!_

_I was – _

_Oh, just shut up,_ I snapped irritably. All of a sudden I felt so tired. _I don't want to hear another lie from you. Just shut up, Naruto._

He did. He sank down with his back against the glass, until he was sitting silently opposite me with the icy water slapping against his hair.

I didn't look at him. I felt betrayed, in an undersea sort of way. I watched the water soak into my suit jacket.

_I'm sorry,_ he said at last.

_I just told you not to lie to me._

_I know._

Another silence. Still, I would not look at him.

_I... wouldn't have done it._

_Fuck it, Naruto!_ The silent fury shook in my arms as I fought to reign it in. _You want to kill yourself? Go ahead. Why the fuck would I care? Go. I don't know why I stopped you the first time you tried. Or even the second. Just do it. Get the razor._

_I wouldn't – _

_Is it the pain you're scared of?_ I bit out angrily. _Fine. That's fine. Not a problem at all. We can go back to Plan A. I can drive you back to the bridge and you can just jump off to join the fish. I won't stop you this time._

_Sasuke, I – _

_Why the fuck do you even do this to me? Why, Naruto? Do you get kicks out of fucking with my head?_

He looked away. I shook the water from my eyes furiously. I was so angry I wanted to reach over and slap him across the face.

_Naruto._ My voice was dangerous. _Look at me._

_Fuck you,_ he whispered, but there was no conviction behind it.

It was the last straw. I threw myself back against the wall, feeling hopeless and drained, and covered my face with my hands. Too much had happened. Everything of the last week – the last _month_, even – jammed itself up in my brain, scrabbling amongst each other like rebellious snakes, everything confused and overwhelming.

The water streaked over my eyes. I thought if anything more happened, I would go into shock.

* * *

Naruto

_Naruto. Look at me._

He didn't understand. He hadn't noticed, but that might have been because of the steam, or even the steady stream of water. It was a good thing. I stared at the floor.

_Fuck you,_ I whispered.

The water was ice against my bare skin but I couldn't feel it, my skin seemed to have formed a living barrier against any sort of sensation. I couldn't focus on anything. Sakura, Sasuke, wishes, magic; gold and black (that word for Love, for Love, for _Love_), green as Sakura's hair and pink as her shattered-glass eyes – everything chased itself in circles, blurred into each other until I couldn't put my finger on where one ended and another began.

I was in Hell.

Perhaps I belonged there – because I wasn't clean, I wasn't at all. It was a dirt underneath my skin, something I couldn't ever scrub away. I'd spent the past hour or so trying.

He hadn't noticed. It was a good thing.

There were scratches all down my back, all across my stomach. My nails had taken up what the soap had left off. Leaning against the shower wall, I almost laughed at the irony.

Sasuke and I – we'd both have matching scars, eight brilliantly parallel nail-marks, down our backs.

What bonded us – bruised us – we had crossed the Styx together...

A knot rose in my throat and I blinked hard. I hated myself. I hated myself. I hated myself. I did.

* * *

Sasuke

I wouldn't speak to him. I wouldn't even look at him for the remainder of the night. Every time I did I wanted to break something, so after a while I decided it would just be better for both of us if I locked my study door.

But at around midnight (that witching hour), when I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed, he was already there.

And he asked me, _Do you believe in God?_

It was a strange question. I was still angry at him so I didn't reply, stepped up to the sink and started brushing my teeth. I noticed – with another spike of unreasonable anger – that the razors had disappeared. Where to, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. But I did want to know, at the same time.

_Do you believe in God,_ he asked me again.

I stole a sideways glance at him. He was just staring. Standing before the mirror and staring at himself in the glass.

I spat out the toothpaste. _No,_ I said. Cuttingly.

_You don't?_

_I don't._

I rinsed and put my toothbrush back, grabbed a towel. I didn't even glance at my own reflection.

_Why not?_

_Because the world's too fucked up for there to be a God,_ I snapped at him.

He tilted his head. The Naruto in the glass tilted as well. He didn't seem to have registered my irritated tone, because his gaze into the mirror was still extremely calm.

_Don't people __**wish**__ for a God to exist when the world's fucked up, instead of denying him? The need for someone to fix everything?_

The dreamy, contemplative note in his voice needled me.

_Yes, but since there is no God, there won't be any fixing._

_How do you know?_

_Because I'm not stupid,_ I retorted. _If he'd wanted to fix things, he'd have done it a lot sooner._

I put the towel back on the rack.

_Where was God in World War II?_ I continued cattily. _The Cold War? Afghanistan? Nowhere. Either he doesn't exist, or he just doesn't give a damn any more. And I don't blame him._

_That's harsh,_ Naruto said, still staring at the mirror.

I shrugged. _"I am not cruel, only truthful"._

He turned to me. _That's Sylvia Plath,_ he said. _"The eye of a little god, four-cornered"._

I was too irritated to formulate a response. _Hn._

_You've read her poems?_

_No. I'm just telepathic._

I turned for the door, half expecting him to follow me (simply because I didn't know what else he would do), but he didn't. He just stayed at the mirror. He didn't even spare me a glance.

I hesitated. _I'm going to bed,_ I said after a brief pause.

He didn't respond.

I felt my fists clench, but at the same time I felt like heaving a sigh. Finally, I said grudgingly, _You coming?_

_I still think that you're wrong,_ he said then, ignoring me and fixing his attention fully on his own eyes in the silver glass. _I think that there has to be a God in all this chaos. There __**has**__ to be._

_That's not even an argument,_ I pointed out, annoyed again. _That's just dogma._

_Then do you believe in Judgement?_

_You mean, of sins?_

He nodded slightly, and I saw him lean forward until his fingertips trailed the mirror. He seemed so rapt by it, so spellbound, that I was almost confused.

_I don't know,_ I said to him. _I guess if God doesn't exist, then Judgement doesn't either._

_Then what reason is there for us to be good?_

_What?_

_If there isn't a God and there isn't Judgement, and yet you say that the world is fucked up – _

He paused, and his sad eyes were thoughtful.

– _then what is there to stop the world from getting worse? What is there to stop us from slipping into chaos – from destroying ourselves?_

I stared at him. There seemed to be a special meaning to each word, as if he was referring to some inner, unvoiced turmoil instead.

_I don't know what you mean,_ I said truthfully, thoroughly puzzled out of my anger.

His fingers dropped from the mirror. His golden head dipped, as if I'd failed him in some way.

For a moment I could've sworn I saw tears in his eyes. But when he looked up again they were dry.

_Don't worry about it,_ he said quietly. _It doesn't matter. Let's go to bed._

* * *

Hinata

_You don't want me to see her,_ I tell him.

He is on the wall. (As always.) I am speaking to him, with the newspaper in my hand, and I am speaking in earnest. The paper blurs, soft tendrils of colour slipping like mist between my fingers. It is almost as if the words printed on it are alive. They are struggling to burst free from the page.

_You don't want me to see her,_ I say again.

Neji does not reply. He just stares out of the photograph, his eyes as steady as the beat of drums.

_Why don't you want me to see her?_ I ask then.

Once again, he does not reply.

The silence is a luscious white. The purest colour in the world.

_If I go and see her, what will you do?_

Nothing. Just silence.

_What will you do, Neji?_

Nothing.

He will do nothing.

It is my answer, his answer, it is both and it is neither. I put the newspaper down.

I do not care any more. I am frightened – for Sakura, because I have abandoned her, and for myself, because if Neji finds out –

But she is my only friend.

I reach for my keys. And then I turn off the lights, so that I will not see Neji's eyes staring at me from the wall.

* * *

Naruto

He did not have an answer for me. I didn't know what I had expected, but for some reason I had always thought that he would be able to save me. I had always thought that he would have an answer. When he'd raped me I'd seen the light in his eyes and it had been so similar to mine that I'd thought...

But lights wink out. Candles, fireflies, smoke flashing on mirrors – always, always so fleeting...

I sat beside him on the bed, on top of the covers. He was turned onto his side, his arm thrown over his eyes, his raven-black hair in a wild disarray. The sheets reached his hips. There was a small bruise on the skin there, like a ripe cranberry, where I'd bitten him earlier that night while we'd made love.

He was naked. So was I. I sat and watched him sleep.

For some reason, I thought of – Erebus. Erebus of the underworld, of darkness; of that inescapable, shadowy beauty; the kind you cannot see, because it is darker than the deepest black, but beautiful nonetheless.

Beautiful because you cannot grasp it. Because it will never be yours.

But if he was Erebus, then what was I?

(_Apollo...?_

_But there is something inherently wrong with such a relationship... Apollo and Erebus, darkness and light..._)

It did not matter. I'd sat by him and watched him like this before, and to preserve our Symmetry I sat and watched him again now.

His chest rose and fell with his breathing, and it seemed to me that the night was rising and falling with it. I thought of the boy with red hair that I'd seen in the park last night, the boy with his piercing green eyes and his cryptic tattoo.

I looked back down at Sasuke. Suddenly, an understanding reached me and I stood from the bed.

I wasn't clean. I never would be.

And Sasuke wasn't either.

And it seemed like a dream, a destiny perhaps (like the briefest of Autumn winds, blowing all the grass in one direction...), but I stood and I went to the closet and I took out my bag.

I put my clothes back inside. I went into the bathroom and found my toothbrush. When I reached for it my blue eyes met me in the mirror overhead, and they were the eyes of another person, someone I didn't recognise.

I almost felt ashamed to see him. In the mirror, I could not face myself. I turned away.

And then when I went back into the bedroom, Sasuke was still there, but he had shifted now; onto his back, his hands lying relaxed by his sides, his fingers slightly curled as he slept on. As if he was waiting for something.

I slipped by him on the bed to the bedroom window. Outside, the moon was full.

I looked down into the street. And my eyes met what I'd somehow – deep inside myself, like déjà vu – always known they'd meet: a boy standing just outside, red hair almost purple in the light, a sliver of black amongst the strands.

He looked up at that exact moment. Our eyes met. Blue and icy green.

It was time to leave.

Because that was how the currents carried me – a leaf drifting from world to world, never staying long enough to settle, but always running, running, running...

I picked up my bag. And as I made my way towards the bedroom door I did not look back at the sleeping form on the bed, I did not kiss him, I did not say goodbye.

He did not have an answer for me. Perhaps I loved him – but I could never stay.

* * *

Sasuke

That night, I dreamed.

I dreamed that we were walking together along a river, just the two of us pinpointed in colour amidst a world of greys.

He had blue eyes and golden hair. He did not speak to me.

And I – I wanted to say something, but every time I tried my mouth wouldn't work, the words wouldn't form themselves.

So I said nothing.

And after a while we were in shadow, because the trees were on our left and the sun was setting.

Twilight came.

And still we said nothing.

But then the moon rose – a bright, cold, full rounded moon...

He turned to me. There were tears in his blue, blue eyes.

I wanted to speak. But I couldn't.

_I love you,_ he said.

And just as I reached out to him, he disappeared from my world like the death of a nacre star.

* * *

_I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions._

_Whatever I see I swallow immediately_

_Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike._

_I am not cruel, only truthful - _

_The eye of a little god, four-cornered._

(Sylvia Plath: _Mirror_)

* * *

**A/N: Just to clear things up... Naruto ran away with Gaara. Now, you might ask, how did Gaara come to be there? Well, I call it... telepathy. Haha. Because Gaara's just weird like that.**

**Hope that didn't come too out of the blue...**

**And I wonder how Sasuke's going to take it once he wakes up and Naruto's gone...? O.o**

**(That dream sequence of his at the end was supposed to be a parallel.)**

**Well, anyway, please review! Please? Like I've said before, it's my birthday, so... please?**

**(And please take a look at my new one-shot, **_**Fairytale**_**, afterwards! And then vote on my poll! :D)**

**Love youse!**


	10. Love

**A/N: Yes, I know, long time no update. But as I said on my Profile Page, I went on holiday – and I can't write on holidays, my brain clogs up from all the tiredness and the jetlag, and the result is a Chapter that I wouldn't be happy with and would end up having to re-write anyway.**

**So, now that I'm back home, I speed-wrote this Chapter for all you lovely people. Hope it doesn't feel too speed-written, haha!**

**Thank-you to Keiri Bradon, , -L.E.N.E.X-, witchbitch, sandsibscrazy, jazzy2may, Cat-Sarah, XxHeavenxSentxX, kana 4, QjD, criesbloodredtears, daydream32, Joli Etoile, Stoic-Genius, left-alone, JD01, EmmaTheSpottedBat, orange sheep of the flock, notperfectXbutXhonestcritc, Tea, elveljung, ..wings., OrangeSpiral, Wing of Darkness, MoonlightMist1010, StreetRacerSakura, Michelle (or, should I say, egglorru?), xXPixiexxStikXx, Kyorose, Blood Zephyr, fan girl 666, RomanceLuver09, Positively, sunset-joy, satans-sweety, Broken Sexed Up Bloody Kitten, ShukakuKyuubi, eeaagoh, imaxgoxgnomgnomxonxya, losethemask, Inu-bitch, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, PotatoBeliever, blueandorangesky10, Kochou-Yuki-Sakura, and Patet.**

**A WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: THERE WILL BE VIOLENCE. If you made it through Desire, though, you'll make it through Love, so don't worry too much about it.**

**Please don't forget to review!**

* * *

**Ten: Love**

0-0-0

_Love seeketh not itself to please,_

_Nor for itself hath any care;_

_But for another gives its ease,_

_And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair..._

(Songs of Experience: _The Clod and the Pebble_)

0-0-0

Sakura

(They say Love is blind, but I do not believe them.

Love is simply the art of seeing what you wish to see.

It is not blind. It cannot be. It is merely an altered lens, the world around you blurred into an alternate truth.

And as time progresses, you begin to forget:

What is the real truth? What is not?

It is as if your Love is the only thing which keeps you anchored: everything else is unsure, everything else drifts away.

Your Love seals you in. You need nothing else.

But if that lens _cracks_ –

Then what have you left?

You have only yourself. The rest is Chaos.)

* * *

Gaara

There was an oak tree in the back yard before the house burnt down, my mother's favourite before it was mine. Large and sweeping – branches broad and generous, a silk oak, leaves a dark green-dusted bronze.

Sitting underneath it no rain reached you, you looked up with each leaf white and silky on the underside, overlapped each other like the pieces of a puzzle. Behind the trunk and nobody could see you but the clouds. Air thick as molasses on a hot Spring day, and the heady scent of flowers, the buzz of bees; wind coming soft from the River to the east, hot sun, cigarette smoke, jaded squalls from the mynas in the shrub. Flies swaggering drunkenly in the slats of spilt sunlight. The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes. The world waiting fitful for the baked days to end.

When I was five or six a strangler fig took seed in the oak's thick crown, sent roots down the trunk.

It took two or three years for the chokehold to take. And I remembered sitting beneath that same oak eight years later, watching the wilted blossoms, the sun-starved bronze leaves –

Watching the two trees pressed together with that mutual need, limbs tangled, leaves tangled, one in another; the fig binding them closer, as if despite everything their Love would not leave them, would not let them be...

In ten years the oak was gone entirely.

All it left was its cage – those grappling vine bars, twisting like some half-distorted smile; leaves full and glossy and stretching out in dark fans.

It looked alive; but its core was empty, black and cold and inescapably hollow. Rotting within it were the remains of my oak.

And so, I suppose –

When Naruto Uzumaki came out that night, when he came out to meet me with a bag over his shoulder and the shadow of Sasuke Uchiha's house dark-lit right behind him –

I'd looked in his eyes. I saw the garrotted look there.

And I'd thought to myself, with the moon striking down:

_So who is the fig tree, and who is the oak?_

* * *

Naruto

_Do you love him?_ he asked me.

_He saved my life,_ I said.

_But do you love him?_ he asked me.

And the answer wouldn't come.

* * *

Sasuke

That morning in December, when I woke and Naruto wasn't there – it was as if someone had plunged me into a vat of ice water.

The initial shock – and then the slow, creeping numb...

For a long time I just lay there in silence, watching the sunlight play out on the window. The day was hot and the breeze, when it blew in, was warm and baked. Shapes shifted on the carpet like my own state of mind. The entire room felt ambiguous, one giant invisible question mark.

Strangely enough, I did not feel angry.

There was only a sense of resignation, a sense that something within me had known all along, but I was just too blind to see it.

(Or perhaps I saw it, I just didn't want to believe: because sometimes, it's so much easier to just see what you want to see.)

And so when he left me –

Something deep throbbed inside my chest. It was an ache very different to the beat of my heart.

And I felt choked somehow, as if someone had drawn me through the eye of a needle.

After a while I got up out of bed and went through with the pointless checking – the closet, the ensuite, the bathroom cupboards. Something told me I'd find a razor on the sink but I didn't. He hadn't left anything behind: not a sock, or a toothbrush, or a word of goodbye.

Just me, and a mirror, and an overwhelming sense of –

Nothing.

Just Nothing.

It hurt in the way only Nothing could hurt. I went out of the room and down the corridor, with a sheet wrapped pointlessly over my hips.

Most of my windows were tinted. Just near the marble staircase, I stopped. Amid the patches of darkened light on the ground there carved a single square of daylight gold, a tiny echo of the outside world.

I picked up the shards of glass on the floor: glass that neither I nor Naruto had touched since we'd broken that window nearly a whole week ago.

The pieces sparkled like tears in my hand. I stared down at them as if I hoped they could somehow define me.

But they couldn't. And I thought then that perhaps it could not be done.

I put my cupped hand out of the broken window and I opened my fingers, and when the glass slipped away I thought how fitting it was –

That all Naruto and I had amounted to was a few fragments of glass, as easily created as they were destroyed.

* * *

Sakura

I have always found it fascinating to stand beside a window.

To stand and look out – when outside is sun, and grass, and blue, blue sky.

Because a window has a duality most things cannot have. It is both inside and outside. It is both dark and light. And when you stand before it you see not only what is beyond in the distance, but superimposed on every tree and cloud you also see a ghostly image of yourself, phantom outlines of a reflection not quite solid, not quite real.

A window is not a mirror. It is too subtle for that.

But when you stand beside it you have a choice – what do you look at? Which is more important to you?

What is around you – or what is within you?

When I stand by a window I find it hard to look out. I find it hard to see anything beyond my own eyes, and Sasuke's, and the fact that I cannot understand the expressions in either.

The glass is thick. I have trapped myself.

And there is no place left for me to go – no place but back, and that is no place at all.

* * *

_...So sang a little Clod of Clay,_

_Trodden with the cattle's feet:_

_But a Pebble of the brook_

_Warbled out these metres meet:..._

(Songs of Experience: _The Clod and the Pebble_)

* * *

Shikamaru

She was not there when I arrived home that night from work.

Without her the place felt different, as if in the wake of her presence something fundamental had changed.

I stood in the darkness. The night crushed like steel.

And I realised only then how empty everything was, as if her existence had leached out everything warm.

* * *

Hinata

I drive and my cell phone rings, I know it is Neji. The cars race past and they leave flitting impressions, red yellow green, sudden blots of colour like a Fauvist painting. In a moment of chaos I am afraid to answer my phone. And then I am afraid of not answering it also, my fingers trembling on the steering wheel, and the night keeps rushing past my open car window.

The ringing stops in mid-squall. Waits. Then redoubles. Neji is not going to let me pass him tonight.

When I pull over I answer it, I keep my voice a soft pastel, milk-and-coffee brown. The interference crackles a mixed salt-and-pepper down the line. In a disconcerting way, everything seems mixed.

_Ah, h-hello – _

_Hinata?_

I wince, clutch the phone with white fingers. _Neji, is that y-y-you – ?_

_Where are you?_

There is a hidden force in his voice, cold, slightly predatory, bordering on the blue of highly polished steel. Each syllable clipped as if sliced with a butter-knife. I try to keep the outside sounds away from my mind, close my eyes, breathe.

_I'm at home,_ I say weakly.

It is the first time I have lied to him in my life.

He knows. _If you're lying to me, Hinata – _

_I'm not._

_Where in the house are you, then?_

_I'm – _But my voice gives out, I feel the weight of his words, as if they are above me and crushing my windpipe. _I'm – I'm in the living r-r-room, and I have the television on – _

_Go turn it off._

I do not question him. _Yes,_ I say, _I will._

_Is it off now?_

_Yes._

A pause. And then, like the roar of a fire that sucks the air dry, _Where are you now, Hinata?_

_I – _

_Don't lie to me. I'm sitting on your living room couch right now and your house is empty. Don't think you can lie to me, Hinata._

_Neji – _

_Where are you._

A rattlesnake spitting poison and the colours sting, I whisper, _I don't know._

And it seems to make sense. It seems like the truth. I catch its colour and I store it within me like a bead, the shimmering incongruity of a soap-film bubble.

_Did Sakura teach you to lie?_

_I don't – _

_Hinata._ And to my surprise he switches, as easily as putting on a different coat; his tone softens, becomes warm, a lush shade of green. _Hinata. You trust me, don't you?_

_Of – of course I trust you, Neji – _

_You know what the doctors said. You can't be exposed to stress, it will make your condition worse. Do you remember them saying that?_

_Yes, but – _

_I just want to keep you safe. You're my only cousin, Hinata. I worry about you._

Sly, flickering, forked tongue of a snake tasting out the air.

_Just tell me where you are, Hinata, and I'll come pick you up. And then we'll forget that any of this ever happened. Alright? Just tell me where you are._

He waits. The emerald green shimmers like haze in the night.

And I am trembling. He is clever and he knows how to break me.

But the night makes me brave. I am not sitting at home. Without his eyes watching from the black-and-white photograph I feel as if I have broken myself free.

_No,_ I whisper then. _I can't. I'm sorry, Neji. I can't. Not this time._

And before I even know what I am doing I hang up as if trying to keep myself whole, and still past my window the colours rush by, like nightmarish wings brushed over with paint.

* * *

Sasuke

And when the night-time came like a blanket drawn over I sat on the porch where so much had been broken, watched the sun crash like fire into the horizon of trees.

There seemed to be something cyclic about things. As if I had spent so many hours of my life pushing onward only to find myself back where everything had begun, everything and nothing all at once. It was hard to believe that only a week had passed.

It didn't feel like a week. It felt undefined, as if measurements like seconds and days and weeks were not enough to describe the passed time completely.

I suppose Naruto just had a natural way of confusing things.

And I suppose he had a way of tilting things too. Like taking hold of a chessboard and slanting it, watching all the pieces slide off but their shadows – black, white, black, white, eight by eight, those bold-cut squares – still there, still real, but thoroughly empty.

And I'd had that feeling before, the night my parents had died; that sense of wondering what the purpose of everything had been, that quiet, muffled, anaesthetised panic: as if now, at the end of things, the world had finally come full circle.

* * *

Sakura

I come home. The door is unlocked and gives way like a plea. I find him sitting outside with his arms braced on the floor behind him, the wind lacing softly through the black silk of his hair.

His beauty is sharp, it is blinding. It lodges in my chest like a thorn. I stand in the doorway to recover my breath.

When he turns to look at me I note how black are his eyes, how in the shifting moonlight they are soaked with deep blue. The shadows are obscure and they chase his lashes like ink. I drop my hand from the doorway.

_Sasuke,_ I say.

_Sakura,_ he says.

The way my name slides from his lips reminds me of smoke.

_I'm home,_ I tell him.

He waits a moment more. And then he gets up in that fluid way of his, as if the air is water and bears him upward along with it, and he comes to me.

He is so beautiful. I see nothing else.

_I love you,_ I tell him.

And the light in his eyes is dark and jealous, and so is the way he kisses me.

_And __**he**__ loves __**you**__,_ he says.

And before I can ask him what he is talking about he is kissing me again: as if his sky is falling, and he doesn't want to be crushed beneath it alone.

* * *

Sasuke

When she told me she loved me I felt something harden like ice in my chest, because I'd heard those words in a dream before and they had meant nothing then, and then meant nothing now.

She didn't know what Love was. Her words were as empty as the light in her eyes.

And so I went to her. And I gave her that kiss, gave it to her in the way one might give a coin to a beggar; and as I pulled away I wondered why Naruto loved her, wondered what it was about her that he wanted.

I hated her. I hated her for having what I could not have.

(And wasn't Hate the way how everything had all begun?)

* * *

Gaara

Temari saw us come in but she didn't say a word, perhaps she was too shocked. She was reading a newspaper and there was a cup of coffee on the table, an empty can of Red Bull, a packet of cigarettes and a Pizza Hut box.

I led him to Temari's room. I closed all the curtains.

And because it was one in the morning I sat on the bed, and watched as he set his bag on the floor. In the darkness his form seemed the same substance as cobweb. His hair shone a pale gold that reminded me of hay and spun thread. He didn't follow me to the bed but went to the window instead, peeled back a tiny corner of the curtain to look outside.

_The moon's out,_ he said quietly.

He sounded resigned. I watched the silver glow of his skin in the moonlight.

_Come here,_ I said.

_It looks so different,_ he said then, as if he had not heard me.

_What does?_

_The moon._

He was trying to make me understand something. I got up from the bed and went to him, took the curtain from his hands.

_Sometimes it's better to just forget,_ I told him.

And then I drew the curtain closed again; and in the darkness that came I took his hand in mine, led him back to the bed, kissed him once on the mouth. And because he did not stop me I kissed him again, and when he fell back against the pillow I followed him, left the door open behind us like an unanswered question.

* * *

Sasuke

In a way I couldn't understand everything seemed so unclear, nothing pure and simple but all things blurred, I kissed Sakura and pressed her up against the wall. She shook feverishly in my arms like a doll, her eyes wide and glazed over as if with smoke. In the warped light her pink hair twisted into a dark form of ochre. Her body seemed to give way beneath my hands.

_You still love me,_ she whispered, rapturous, reeling.

_Shut up,_ I told her and kissed her again.

And when her hands came up to wrap around my neck I didn't stop her, I gripped her waist as if I hoped to rip her in half. Her dress flapped and shuddered in the wind. And when I broke the kiss I saw that her eyes were a strange colour in the semi-darkness, I could almost pretend they were blue.

_Do you love me?_ I asked then as if speaking right through her.

And the reply came gentle as a hiss through the grass: _Yes. I love you._

It was easier to pretend. I kissed her again, fiercely, as if it were my soul pouring out between my lips, something precious I only wanted to give one person who knew me. And although the taste was different, and the body was different, and the way she clung to me different as well, it didn't matter: nothing was clear anyway: and it didn't seem to matter what pieces you filled the chessboard with, as long as the shadows were no longer there to haunt you.

* * *

Sakura

The kiss destroys me, so potent that I shudder my blind way through it. When he releases me I feel as if I have suddenly been dropped from a large height and left to fall.

My knees give way. He catches me roughly under the arms and pulls me up, leans back in as if to kiss me again; and in a moment of desperation I say, _No more, no more._

He gives me a hard look. His fingers tighten on my arm. _What do you mean, no more?_

_I – you're hurting me,_ but he doesn't loosen his grip, he tightens it.

_Am I?_ he says, and then softly: _Good._

And when I meet his eyes I feel their intensity, feel them singe every nerve in my body. Suddenly, he terrifies me. The smirk on his lips is so casual, so cruel, I almost do not recognise him, he seems transformed in some way. In the two years that I've known him he has never been like this. He has never openly showed me who he is, how he thinks, how he feels.

My breath comes choppy. I struggle.

_Sasuke, you're hurting – _

_Don't move._

I freeze at his tone, stare up at him, breathless. I can hear my heart thundering the blood in my ears.

_Sasuke,_ I say.

He shakes me silent.

And then he stares, minutely, his gaze will not leave my eyes. I don't know what he is trying to find in me. Perhaps it is not me he is trying to find at all.

And then I realise –

* * *

Sasuke

_Where's Naruto?_ she asked me.

The name from her lips jolted me back from a dream, clashed with the faint blue light of her eyes. A fury took me and I snarled. I was shaking, though what from, I didn't know. Maybe anger. Maybe despair. I took hold of the sleeve of her dress and tore, savagely, a twisted sense of hatred urging me on, roared in my ears and stopped me from thinking, and it was good not to think, it was good not to know who I'd become –

She cried out in surprise. She snatched at the dress seams as they peeled apart in my hands.

_What are you doing – !_

My voice came out as a harsh bark, scraping the air between us. _Don't you love me?_

_Yes, I do, but – _

_Then prove it._

_Sasuke – !_

_Prove it!_ And I wrapped hard fingers under her chin, forced those eyes – were they blue or green? – to look into mine, shoved her back until she choked. _Prove that you love me, I want you to __**prove it**__ – _

_Get off me, I don't know you, I don't know – _

I kissed her. I forced it. And she tried to fight it but she was mine, we both knew it, she melted under me. She kissed back. She was terrified and she was crying.

And she said, half-choked with her own tears and my mouth: _I'm not him._

And I said, half-choked inside with something I didn't understand: _I don't give a damn._

And then I wrenched myself away from her, gripped her dress until my knuckles turned white in the moonlit sheen and I ripped, I ripped, I ripped at her –

_I'm not him,_ she said again, louder.

I slapped her. She fell back against the wall.

_I don't want to hear it, Sakura,_ I hissed then; and even as I ripped at her again I hated her, I hated her, I hated myself.

* * *

Sakura

It is something strange to be hit for the first time.

He had never hit me before. Never directly.

And he was so strong that my entire face throbbed from the force of his hand, and something cracked deep within me with a peal like thunder –

Did I love him?

Yes.

But what was there to love?

When he took me by the shoulders and forced my stomach to the wall I knew it was because he didn't want to see my face, didn't want to see my eyes, didn't want to know that it was me he was holding and not someone else...

It shattered me. When he pressed up against me I fought.

He bit the back of my neck. _I'll scream,_ I whispered.

_Go right ahead._ And he tore off the last piece of my dress.

* * *

Sasuke

She had desperation and it gave her an insane strength, to my surprise she writhed away like a snake. Left the shreds of her dress behind her like the torn wings of a moth. Tried to streak away – I caught her wrist – she yanked as if my touch had burned her, managed to twist away, to run.

She was going for the front door. I reached it just as she did, slammed it closed, grabbed her and tried to force her to still.

She screamed. I stifled her with a kiss.

And then she had struggled away again, an almost manic look in her eyes, panting. Her hair crimson on her bare shoulders. Her skin mottled at the waist where I'd gripped her, a bruise on her jaw –

And the words poured out, tumbling one over the other in their frenzy to leave her, to reach the air:

_Let me go, Sasuke, please, just let me go – _

_Shut up._

_Please – _

_I told you to shut up!_

I could see her chest rising and falling with her tears. The black lace of her bra was sharp against the white of her skin. She backed away from me. I was blocking the door and she only had one place to go.

I didn't hurry. The moon was out and her eyes were blue again.

_Sasuke,_ she whispered. _Sasuke, don't, don't – _

I didn't speak.

And then suddenly we were in the kitchen and as if she finally understood what I wanted she looked wildly around her, ripped the fridge open. I didn't move. When next she faced me she had a bottle of wine in her hands.

She smashed it on the counter. The liquid pooled on the tiles like blood.

I looked at her. I smiled. I took a step closer.

Her voice hitched: _Come any closer, Sasuke, and I'll – _

_And you'll what?_

_And I'll – _

_You wouldn't do that, Sakura._ And to show it I took another step forward, kept my eyes on hers.

_I can, and I will, I'll twist the glass in your __**face**__ – _

_I thought you said you loved me._

She opened her mouth but nothing came out, just a little dark "o" framed by the red of her lips. And I knew then that she was flailing, drowning; I could do whatever I wanted with her and she would not be able to stop me, because that was how Love worked – how Love broke you, how Love _destroyed_ –

She gave a half-sob. Her shoulders shuddered.

And she said: _I don't – I don't understand – _

_You don't have to,_ I said.

_You do love me,_ she said. As if grasping for something that was fast disappearing from her: _Don't you?_

And I wondered what exactly she would look like – what it would look like in those ghost-blue eyes – if I said –

_No._

* * *

Gaara

When it was done we lay next to each other on the bed, fully clothed, let the silence claim us.

The darkness settled on his skin like water.

_I don't know who you are,_ he said at last.

I looked at him. _Does it matter?_ I said.

And we both knew that it didn't. He started to cry.

* * *

Sasuke

When the syllable stepped off my lips there was nothing but silence.

It yawned between us. Not even my eyes could bridge it.

And then suddenly she screamed, she screamed, she _screamed_ as if that single word of mine had forced itself inside her very being and ripped her in a way my hands never could. I was stunned. It was a completely guttural, terrifying sound; because it was a sound that didn't seem to come from her mouth, but rather her entire body, every pore screaming in that same quivering vibrato as if someone had suddenly set her alight –

It froze me. Never in my life had I heard so much pain in one sound.

And then she _ran_ –

I tried to catch her as she went past. But something in me was still reeling from that scream, I misjudged the distance and missed her. My fingers caught air. She streaked past like fire and I heard the crash of glass as she let the bottle-top go; and suddenly I was terrified as well, because I had never seen her like this, _never_.

Around me the empty house jeered, as if to say: _You did this..._

(And then Naruto's eyes – blue – so sad; so terribly, terribly, terribly sad...)

I ran after her.

I ran.

She was halfway up the marble stairs – where was she going? It didn't matter. I had to stop her. I had to stop her from doing whatever she was going to do. And still she was screaming that manic scream and I caught the banister, started up the stairs two at a time.

My heart was pounding two drum beats in my ears. I realised then that for some reason I was crying as well.

She'd reached the landing. And there was the giant gilt mirror, and I saw in its silver surface her eyes – definitely green, no hint of blue – and they were wild, they were crumbling.

_Stop!_ I yelled at her. Though what I wanted her to stop, I didn't know.

When I reached the landing as well she turned to look at me.

The scream had ended. Her entire body heaved.

And all there was between us was her breath, my breath; the only thing we shared was the air we both breathed.

_Sasuke,_ she whispered in a voice I didn't know.

And then in one movement like the act of falling she rushed forward, as if she wanted to dive straight into that mirror – as if it held a world she had lost –

The glass shattered.

And strangely I thought I saw in each fragment a diamond – a promise – a star –

And as the silver pieces came down like a shower of rain I watched, I stared, the slender arc of each shard perfect, the moonlight caught on every edge and surface like brimming tears and they were silent and I didn't know what they were trying to tell me –

When they fell at my feet all I could see was myself. A million tiny versions of myself, each as terrible as the knot in my chest.

When I looked into my own eyes I felt as if I were dying.

And she lay there unmoving amidst the sea of glass, like a butterfly pinned through the stomach to paper.

Behind her was the window, just moonlight, no glass; a reminder of all the things that I had made and broken.

My legs gave out. I collapsed against the marble banister.

And I buried my face in my hands as if I wished – _once upon a star _– that everything would end, end, end; just end like the darkness, end like the silver, end like the light in Naruto's blue eyes.

* * *

Naruto

(I suppose, everything considered, what we had was just not enough.

But then again, what did we have? The only thing holding us together was a bridge, both physical and not, the notion that we were somehow alike. And because circumstance had made it so – made me choose that time, that place, that water; made him choose that same time, same place, same moment to save me from that same water – that was what had created us, what had brought us together.

And I think – how delicate that bond, how easily broken, how easily it might not have come about at all.

If I had not listened to Kiba and gone to his house; if I had not met Sakura; if I had not been in the taxi club that day he came back for me... how different everything would have been.

But because things were just so, we let it be. We kissed, we touched, we made love. We pretended that there was nothing more. We pretended that we were all that mattered, the only things in the world that mattered; as if we believed that if we ignored it reality would spare us, simply pass us by...

As if we believed that if we did not mention it, the cracks in the glass would just cease to exist, melt away like the days and the nights spent between us, melt away like a dream or a soft candle flame...

But cracked glass – broken glass – can never hold things for long. And Sasuke and I –

To stay with him was to destroy him. And sooner or later, it would destroy me too.

And there could be nothing between us – because it was not Love we shared, not even Hate; just that age-old Desire, as common as dust.)

* * *

_...Love seeketh only Self to please,_

_To bind another to its delight;_

_Joys in another's loss of ease,_

_And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite._

(Songs of Experience: _The Clod and the Pebble_)

* * *

**A/N: Now if **_**that**_** isn't messed up, then I don't know what is. Sigh. Now you guys know what I meant when I said on my Profile Page that Chapter Ten was a turning point in the story.**

**With that interaction between Sasuke and Sakura: those who have seen that scene between Vivienne Leigh's Blanche DuBois and Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski in **_**A Streetcar Named Desire**_** will recognise the similarities. :D**

**(I hope you guys realised that Sasuke's initial intention was to rape Sakura... but because it wasn't really about the sex on Sasuke's part I kept it mainly free of any sexual overtones and focused on the violence. Sorry if it confused anyone.)**

**Oh, and one more thing before I bow out: I have put out a new One-Shot, titled **_**Silence**_** (**It is never easy on those who have to pick up the pieces. SasuNaru, AU**), and in a week or so I shall put out another one titled **_**Parallax**_** (**Sasuke leaves Naruto three short words on a piece of paper. SasuNaru, AU**). Please don't forget to take a look and review!**

**And REVIEW THIS CHAPTER!!! I need your support to keep writing! REVIEEEEWWWWW!!!!**


	11. Shadow

**A/N: This Chappie is late, yes, I know. But I tried. I really did. And because I sat on it and revised it so many times, I'm really hoping it's the best I could make it be!**

**Thank-you to xREWIND, CandiesMoe, Cali0623, Bitter Faerie, Joh, ThePervertedGiraffe, Heaven Cobra, Boejangles, Jellybean06, Wrath of the Wrathful, PrincessAmioKi, M1nks, skepsis66, lovesephy15, MrsHellman, Shinobi Mi-chan, LynLin, Royaldark, theGreyPebble, Interrogated Pyjamas., spiffycaptainj, robinbirdz, Aimi Willows, Identity, A Kiss For A Kill, Anime Atomika, Teng a Ling, MagentaDusk, RASENGANXD, QjD, UkeSasuke, EmmaTheSpottedBat, cajega, orange sheep of the flock, Aiwin, elveljung, Teddyloverr, OrangeSpiral, hollowsmile, pinktears, dragonsfairy, Hopelesslielost, Kisa167, egglorru, utoi, MCrind, StreetRacerSakura, redhedinsanity, Positively, Faery Goddyss, EdSpikeSesshyGirl, Blood Zephyr, and fan girl 666.**

**Now this Chapter is intended as a... more reflective one, **_**per se**_**. Reflecting on relationships and the inherent ambiguity of everything. If that even makes sense o.O. And I'm quite sure that somehow my writing style has changed yet again but that's bound to happen anyway, and it's not always a bad thing.**

**Either way, tell me what you think in a review!**

* * *

**Eleven: Shadow**

0-0-0

_Between the idea_

_And the reality_

_Between the motion_

_And the act_

_Falls the Shadow_

(T.S. Eliot: _The Hollow Men_)

0-0-0

Sasuke

("_Itachi?"_

_He turns. "Yes, little brother?"_

"_I love you."_

"_I know," he says. "I know."_)

* * *

Shikamaru

I remember one summer a year or so ago when a great heatwave had struck Brisbane, temperatures rocketing up to forty or more, so that everywhere you went out the streets were empty, people shrivelling into their houses and cars, not trying to fight nature but trying to live by it, turning on air-conditioners and hand-held fans.

I'd sat in my home office that faced the road. I hadn't had an air-conditioner – I'd moved in just a month ago – and so I'd opened all the windows, trying to catch a breeze, propped my face on an elbow and stared out at the blank street, waiting for the syrupy day to end.

No breeze had come. But black flies had, tiny black bodies seeking to escape the baked sunshine. I'd watched their thin wings as they'd flown round my ceiling, the light glancing off them in translucent facets.

In the afternoon I'd closed all the windows again.

Some time afterwards, when the sun had died back down, a fly that had flown in when the windows had been open had begun to throw itself against the closed glass.

And I remember that there had been something very tragic about the sight – watching this tiny thing struggle with something much greater than itself, struggling to comprehend this invisible force (_was it Destiny?_) that slammed into it again and again and again, choking its life away even as it choked off its freedom –

That year, the heat had killed forty in Brisbane.

And that year, Sasuke had married Sakura Haruno.

* * *

Sasuke

There will always be a gaping void between what I know of myself and what I pretend to believe, and that is something I understand and cannot deny.

Some people will say, _But you __**must**__ know yourself. After all, nobody knows yourself better than you. _And they will tell me that it is like being inside a great house – that only you yourself can know the inside of it, know each intimate room and corner, but others can only stand on the street and stare in, trying to guess the real whole from what they glimpse through the windows.

But I think – that cannot be right, can it?

Because what if you haven't built that house yet – or if you have the plans, but you've built it lopsided – or if you tear it all down because the timbers have rotted, and you want nothing more than to rebuild it again but can't, because you can't remember how to rebuild it healthy, how to rebuild the entire foundations _whole_ –

What then? What are you supposed to do with yourself then?

Who are you even supposed to blame?

* * *

Hinata

(If I could bottle the world and let it sit still, the whole universe given up to silence as the right and the wrong sifted out like two colours, bleeding apart from a centre of grey –

Afterward, would the world still be the same?

Is it even possible to reduce the whole world to two separate fragments, two plain-perfect halves? Is it possible for us to sit there and say – _you are good_, or _you are evil_, or _you are_ or _you are not to blame_ –

Is it possible? And what does that even mean?

When I was little Neji used to take me out to the city, back when my parents still owned our family business; and because on weekends they rarely came home and Neji had nowhere to go, he took care of me, took me out to pass the time, and we'd wonder like ghosts through the grid-like streets, visiting bookshops, cafes, museums, shopfronts; sitting together beneath the sandstone arches of the Casino and looking out at the people just drifting on by, trying to guess pasts by the set of their faces.

And I remember the feeling so, so clearly – that sense of soaring, the white in the blue of the sky; only the two of us still while the rest of the world moved on, crowds flowing, changing, merging, dividing. It was a freedom that started somewhere inside and pushed outward like a bubble, a great, golden bubble; the two of us trying to suppress it because it was so _unreasonable_ that we should feel so happy, so free –

– and then, suddenly, the bubble growing too big to hold back, and the smiles would break out across our faces and for no reason at all (and that was what made it so _beautiful_) we'd just laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

We didn't think very much of the world around us, in those days. We didn't really care. And I loved it, I loved him, I loved it that way.

When I was about eight my mother died and my father took in a second wife.

And the whole world changed. Neji changed.

All my life I never quite understood why.

We still did the old things – went out on weekends, sat on street corners. But everything was different now that Mother was gone. The bubble had burst, and neither of us knew how to conjure it again; so that when we looked at the people around us we couldn't see anything, or at least not the things that we once used to see.

I became quiet, uncertain, confused, unsure. And Neji became cold, and foreign, and harsh.

Every now and then I remember he would point out certain people, not caring if they saw him or saw me stare.

And he'd say to me, _That person is bad, Hinata_; and then I'd ask him why, and he'd say, _I can tell._

Once I remember asking him _how_ he could tell. And he'd told me that he could see their colours – see whether they were black, or whether they were white; whether they were good, or whether they were bad.

_You'll understand one day, Hinata,_ he'd told me. _One day you'll be able to see the truth like me. Whether a person's heart is __**straight**__ or not, whether or not it lies in the right place._

At that time, I hadn't understood. The colours had not yet come to my eyes.

But when they did come – and I can't remember when they did – I'd still not understood, not understood his words at all.

Even now, I still do not understand.

Because _straight_ is a line, or the way of a street – but a _human heart_...?

I wonder that it can be defined at all. In my mind, I never see it as black or as white.

No matter how long I sit and I stare, the human heart has always been grey.)

* * *

Sakura

I wake. Silence.

Open eyes. Silence.

I stand. Silence.

I breathe.

Silence.

The moonlight is bleeding right into my arms.

Everything has happened.

* * *

Sasuke

When I went up to see her she'd opened the window, and in her bra and underwear she was trying to pack.

From the doorway I watched her. Shadows dipped at her back. Only when she straightened again did I see they were bruises, morbid blossoms that lounged out all over her skin. Her left shoulder where she'd charged into the mirror I'd tried to bandage, but I had not done a good job and it was coming undone. In the wash of milk-moonlight the dried blood blanched faint purple. A piece of pale mirror tangled tears in her hair.

_What are you doing,_ I said.

Nothing in her paused. It was as if she had not heard me at all.

I waited a moment, unsure. The first time between us that I did not know how to handle her. Not glass like Naruto – but pieces of glass, and I was afraid that if I spread my cupped fingers I'd lose her.

(And I was afraid of the fact that I seemed to care, and couldn't understand why on earth I did.)

I cleared my throat. _Sakura?_ I said.

Something tightened. She turned her head a fraction. And her face was very careful, little pieces slid into place, she was hiding behind the soft green of her eyes.

_I'm going home,_ she said.

I swallowed hard. _What did you say?_

_I'm going home,_ again.

I couldn't think of where she could possibly mean. Her parents had died well over a year ago. She had no other relatives alive. I stood there in silence for a long while trying to understand her; she waited, and then started packing again.

I saw that her hands were shaking, just slightly. In the light they only served to make her more fragile, give her the suspended look of a precious vase – a fragility only apparent when the vase is broken.

I bit my lip and looked away.

_Where's that?_ I asked finally, looking anywhere but directly at her.

_America._ She went to the dresser, opened it. The moon chased her every movement in silver. _I have – there's a boy there. He used to send me letters._

I forgot myself. _Letters?_ I hissed, very softly, and I crossed the floor and grabbed her arm.

She didn't fight me. But she tightened again.

I remembered the bruises on the skin of her back.

And then, strangely, and very, very slowly, I let go of her and looked away again.

It was a notion of being utterly helpless, so completely unable to make sense of things. She'd changed and I couldn't possibly blame her. She'd become like Naruto now, and I had this vague feeling – that somehow everyone in my life was moving, and I was the only one standing still, and one by one they were leaving me behind. It terrified me in a way I couldn't possibly define.

_Did he – love you?_ I asked tersely, my fingers brushing her arm again.

She moved away as if my touch had burned her.

_I think – he used to. It was a very long time ago. Before I lov – before I married you._

_When are you leaving, then?_

_I haven't bought the tickets yet._

_Are you going to – _

She looked up at me and the words caught themselves in my throat. I swallowed them. They didn't seem to matter anymore, just vain little flaps of air, signifying nothing. I folded my arms over my chest instead and turned my head away from the green of her eyes.

_Sasuke?_

She took a step towards me. I snapped at her. _Don't touch me._

She stopped. Turned away.

And I could feel everything in the air between us, the hours and the days and the months and the years, all the times I'd hated her, all the times she'd hated me, and all the times she'd _loved_ –

I tried again.

_Are you going to come back? To Australia?_

_It depends on whether – whether he'll still have me. _She made a weak attempt at a was no accusation in her tone and that stung me more. _Nobody wants damaged goods, right?_

I flinched inwardly. Tried to keep my expression impassive but failed somehow, a few things slipped out between the cracks.

She misread the look on my face.

_I know you won't want a divorce, Sasuke. I know that – that you have a reputation you have to keep at the Corporation. So I won't ask for a divorce. Just a – separation. For a little while. Until things get better. You can just tell them that I've gone to visit a relative or – gone for a holiday. They don't need to know._

_A holiday,_ I echoed weakly. My voice gave out halfway. _Alright. If – if that's what you want, Sakura._

_It is._

I nodded. She went back to her packing.

And then we lapsed into silence, because it seemed fitting somehow. The blind words couldn't break themselves out of my mouth.

* * *

Shikamaru

The house is quiet but the world is loud; and outside the grey wind is lashing at trees, brooding, each furious blow heavy against the walls of my house, trying to rip the fabric of my being apart. No matter how many years pass me by I always find that I'm surprised at the sheer force of the world, find it hard to reconcile it with who I am deep at heart.

And so normally I never go outside at night – because it is easier to stay inside, watch the world from my window, and know that the glass (_this house_) insulates me from the chaos outside.

But tonight, the wind calls me. The black shadows writhe.

I go out and the impending storm tears at me with claws. I watch the wide world as it heaves and it sighs, a great demonic thing with eyes that glow black in the moon.

And I find the only constant thing in this world is my shadow: dark and deadly, but staying right by my side.

* * *

Sasuke

When at last I turned to leave she caught at my shoulder, just a soft brushing of pale fingertips.

_Do you love him, Sasuke?_ she asked very quietly.

I didn't speak. She took her hand away from my sleeve. And she knew the answer, even though I didn't speak it; she knew it, because she'd felt it before.

From the moon I could see the grey of her shadow, still and empty on the opposite wall.

_I've failed you, haven't I?_ she said.

The wake of her words chased me out of the room.

* * *

_Between the conception_

_And the creation_

_Between the emotion_

_And the response_

_Falls the Shadow_

(T.S. Eliot: _The Hollow Men_)

* * *

Sakura

(It is a bit like falling, like starting down a steep slope; when things start breaking apart you know you can't stop them, because if you want to stop falling you must have something to hold onto, and the closest things to your hands is the sky.

And it's at this sort of time when you gradually realise – that from the very beginning you'd known it would end, but because you'd had hope (because you were only human) you'd let it all happen, you'd let yourself go.

You had always known that you were falling.

And I know now, why it had never seemed to bother me before – because before, Sasuke had fallen along with me; and it hadn't seemed to matter how far I fell, as long as I did not fall all alone.

Selfish, isn't it? But that's what we are...)

* * *

Sasuke

Guilt is a precious, precious thing.

It is perhaps one of the subtler emotions – not so blatant as happiness, or sadness, or anger, but nonetheless still terrifyingly potent.

When Sakura left the house for the final time I stood upstairs by my bedroom window, watching as her car pulled out of the driveway. In the night it was hard to see her face through the windscreen. I tried – twice – but then she was gone, and soon not even the shadow of her car remained.

The house was so, so very quiet without her.

I closed the window and then the curtain behind it. The thick drapes felt confused and alien beneath my hands. And through the numbness I felt – familiar, but not entirely so – I felt a distinct loneliness, now that I had destroyed everything I possibly could've, now that I was left with nothing but what I'd started with –

– an empty house, the shimmering dark, and my own shadow a stark reminder beside me.

I looked at it for a while. It seemed very complacent. There was a unifying but still a separateness about it, as if it didn't quite belong to me. Or perhaps _I_ didn't quite belong to _it_.

Who was I, anyway, to lay claim to such an abstract entity as a shadow?

When I went to the ensuite to wash my hands I'd looked up and caught my reflection in the mirror.

Could I even lay claim to my own reflection?

_Was_ it my reflection?

I'd looked into the dark eyes and realised how inhuman they looked to me now, how very similar and yet unrecognisable the expression in them was.

I turned the tap off and trailed wet fingers on the glass.

_Sasuke,_ I'd said to the mirror as clear as I could.

But that didn't feel right. That made it seem – as if the real Sasuke was the one in the mirror, that I was calling to him from across the glass, because _I_ was a sham – an empty shell – and I knew I couldn't live without the truth of a name.

That didn't feel right.

_No,_ I'd said, to amend it. _I am Sasuke. __**I **__am Sasuke. I am._

The reflection had seemed to say, _You don't know who you are at all._

_I know who I am,_ I'd said then to the silence.

The dark eyes had watched calmly, completely unconvinced.

_I know who I am,_ I'd repeated again. _I am Sasuke. I am – _

But my own eyes had known the lie in those words. With the emptiness had come a sense of utter loss, an utter inability to understand who it was – was it Sasuke Uchiha? or somebody (_something_) else? – that lingered in the shadows behind the mirror.

I didn't know who I really was at all. It wouldn't matter how many times I tried to say it.

Silence would have been better.

* * *

Hinata

I wake because I hear a car starting, and when I look up at Sasuke's house I see the garage door begin to raise.

I am afraid. There is something tremulous in the air. I open my car door and stand out on the road, knowing that the stars are a strange off-white, and when I see Sakura's car pulling out I feel a grinding weight in my stomach.

She can see me. I know it. I stand by the road.

But she does not stop for me – doesn't even pause; and as I watch her red tail-lights turn the next street corner I know I have failed her, in the worst possible way.

The stars blink at me. Their judgement is cold and serene.

The place where her car has turned away is shimmering like heat, a torpid sienna that stings the back of the eye. Like twin clots of blood they trail away up the asphalt. I feel as if I could reach out my fingers – touch each scale of colour and watch them bead on my skin, bead and then roll off like swollen drops of rain.

My throat is dry. I look back up at the house. And it too is the same brick-baked, deadened red, not new wounds but old ones reopened, uncleansed, no sudden truths but what was there all along, simmering beneath a thin surface no-one had dared to release.

Something has broken today.

I tremble in the face of it. Like a terrible gust of cold wind.

And to prevent myself breaking I sit down on the curbside, stare up at the single lighted window in the house. A shadow moves into it like a giant black hand. Beside me dandelions are pushing up through the grass, choking to death but still trying.

* * *

Sasuke

(Naruto was wrong.

There _were_ photographs – photographs of me, my family; the world as it could've been before Itachi had torn it all apart.

In those days, photographs meant nothing much to us; we took them and we forgot them, slotted them away like prisoners into photo albums, put them onto the bookshelves where they collected – not memories, but dust, windows into days gone by.

We had never been the perfect family: my father was stern and always away on business, my mother too soft, too pliant, too gentle. Like stone and water my parents held us together, raising me and raising my brother as if they never quite knew what to do with us. My father favoured Itachi. My mother favoured me. And so divisions began, tiny cracks beneath stone; spreading silently outward, a slow corrosion.

I had always loved Itachi.

It was something ingrained in me; Itachi was clever and charming and talented. He was the first-born son of the Uchiha family. People lowered their eyes in respect when he passed them. I loved him as one might love an idol, a deep admiration that throbbed like a heartbeat through my chest: and like a heartbeat my love for him held me together, kept me alive and – strangely – kept me whole.

And so we grew – we grew together, together but somehow always apart, two branches of the same tree peeling away from its trunk.

By the time that we were both old enough to realise that gaping chasm between us it was too late, we were already too old, nothing could bridge us anymore.

Nothing could change what had already been done.

We could only try and fix it – patch it together – like trying to bind two minds together with twine. But even as we tried we both knew we were failing; we were just too different, and yet just too much the same, so that when we tried to quantify what we were to each other we always fell short, never quite knew the answers.

So I've always wondered –

Why did he do it?

Is it even possible to feel such desperation – such despair – that you would turn the gun on the ones that you love?

Is it possible? If you had that choice – would you take it?

I suppose Itachi and I are not so different after all.

Except I am perhaps the better murderer – not killing from the outside with the quick silence of a bullet; but killing from the inside, a slow spreading rot.

I am worse than poison. I kill from within the heart.)

* * *

Gaara

That night I sat by the bed and watched him.

He was still asleep. The black cupped around him like a hand. When he breathed a little strand of soft blonde hair quivered over the side of his cheek like a sunbeam, so slight and inconsequential I could almost believe it was air.

Temari came in through the doorway behind me.

Something had happened. I could tell by her stance. And almost immediately I knew what the problem was, because I'd been expecting it, and anyway Temari had become predictable these days.

I could feel her. She was restless. She had something to say.

I could've put her out of her misery and broached the topic myself – but I was curious, I wanted to know how she'd approach it. What way she'd frame things. What weapons she'd use. I'd always known that was the surest way to tell what somebody thought of you.

And so for a moment that was just all there was – her shadow from the doorway spilling over my back, pure silence, more shadows, and quiet muffled breath; and absolute stillness but for a strand of blonde hair.

I reached out and brushed the strand away.

The movement broke things. It ended her silence. From the shift in her shadow I knew she'd made up her mind.

_Why did you bring him here,_ I heard her say.

She'd surprised me by avoiding the subject altogether. Just testing the waters. I didn't turn to face her.

_He needed somebody,_ I said at last to the air.

_Are you sure that's the reason, Gaara?_

_Yes. I'm sure._

She moved and I heard the rustle of skirts, the dulcet stab of a high-heeled shoe. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hand inch towards me, as if to try and touch my shoulder. I turned and looked at her. The hand stopped halfway.

She smirked. Testing the waters again.

_You seem very defensive, Gaara,_ she said. _Are you sure you didn't bring him here just because __**you**__ needed somebody?_

On Temari's bed Naruto slept on, the sharp stab of light from the open doorway spearing thinly at the tip of his throat.

_I don't need anybody, Temari,_ I said then, quietly. _To me, everybody is dispensable. Even you._

_Dispensable? I hope that's not a fucked up way of insinuating that you'd kill me, Gaara. Unless you plan on killing Kankurou to shut him up too._

_What must be done must be done,_ I said very calmly. In my mind I could see the sudden flash of white metal, the mesmerising splatter of arterial spray on a wall. Subconsciously, my hand grazed the top of Naruto's arm._ Now go away, Temari._

She didn't. _Fuck you. I want answers._

I looked at her. Her lips were pinched into one white line, so that the shadows under her cheekbones and nestled warm at her throat were even more pronounced, jagged shapes on the edge of her pale skin.

_No,_ I told her.

_If it wasn't for me, Gaara, you'd be in jail right now. I think I'm entitled to some fucking idea of what is going on around here – !_

_And if it wasn't for me, Temari, you'd have died years ago._

She snarled. I'd gotten to her; her hands were shaking. I watched as she leant forward to hiss the words into my face, a Temari entirely different to the cynical journalist she pretended to be.

_That was your mistake, not mine. You had the choice, you didn't take it. You know that I can still end things now. The police are out looking for you right this minute._

I looked at her throat. _You forget that I can end things too._

_Is that meant to be a threat?_ – a semi-masked growl, but beneath it a quivering, anticipatory fear.

I kept my eyes steady. _Not a threat. Just a promise._

She clenched her fists. Her knuckles tightened to white. And for a sudden, surprising moment I saw her morph into me, saw the fury that clenched her green eyes to black. She leaned forward again as if to kiss me, and in resignation I waited – but instead she just placed a finger against my lip.

_I don't ever want to see you again,_ she hissed. _You're a murderer. Get out before I call the police._

I smiled at the thin membrane (_so very, very breakable_) that stretched out over her white collarbones.

Her eyes sparked. _Get out! _she snapped. _Get out!_

I smiled again. She really was quite predictable.

_I'm not a murderer, Temari,_ I told her then, and her finger rode over the curve of my lips.

* * *

Temari

When he smiled I knew he was looking at my throat, and suddenly a dark lash struck across my back like a splinter and I snapped beneath it.

_Get out!_ I yelled at him. _Get out!_

And then he was smiling again, with that terrible, cool jade in his eyes, as glassy and expressionless as that of a corpse. I was suddenly afraid. My finger felt glued to his lips.

_I'm not a murderer, Temari,_ he said to me then.

I lifted my hand and slapped him. Hard, across the face. The sound of the blow ricocheted off the walls, came back like an echo and swooped us again.

He turned his face back to me with a peculiar, deadly look in his eyes. I'd seen that look before only once in my life.

A sudden flash of silver caught my eye and I looked down to his left hand.

He had flicked on his lighter.

(_Clink. Schhn-ick._)

_You're a liar,_ I hissed shakily then, still staring at the lighter. _You're a liar!_

_I'm not a murderer._

I took a step back. _I don't believe you!_

_Why not?_

_I – __**don't**__ – _

A smile tweaked the corner of his pale, dead lips. _You see? I told you that you wouldn't believe me._

I started away from him with a cry, pulled my arm back to myself. My voice climbed in jagged staggers and leaps. I didn't feel like myself at all.

_You – __**monster**__ – you killed him, I __**know**__ you did – !_

_How would you know?_

_I just – __**know**__ – !_

When he opened his mouth each word fell like a death-knell, the silent shadows within them pummelling me into the dark. Behind him, as if in a glass-sealed slumber, the form of Naruto Uzumaki dreamed on.

_I didn't kill him,_ he said.

(The last twist of the knife.)

* * *

Sakura

When I arrive he is standing outside his own house, arms spread out before him, tilting forward into the fringe of an imminent storm.

He looks at me slowly. He raises an eyebrow.

_I want to see her,_ I tell him quietly then.

_About the article?_

_Yes._

_You want her to withdraw it from print._

It is not a question; it does not need to be. I am surprised. He has read my mind completely.

He looks away again, and lowers the spread of his palms. _I have her address, _he says softly. _But you might want to wait until the storm passes over._

_I don't want to wait for anything now, Shikamaru._

The tone of my voice surprises _him_ this time. He brings his dark eyes to my face once again, pricks and probes it, searches into my eyes.

Finally, he nods.

_Yes,_ he says then. Shadows clasp at his back as he turns to go back inside. _I suppose if you start the storm then there's no point in waiting for it to pass you over._

_Best to end it,_ his silence seems to say; and I follow him quietly back into his house.

* * *

Hinata

The boy, when he comes, is tall. He has a tan leather jacket and slightly-ripped jeans, a black shirt under the jacket, a cheap ring on his hand. He has a duffel bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. I try to see his face but I can't. He avoids the light from the few streetlamps, preferring to stay safe in familiar territory, melts himself back into the consuming darkness.

He is brown – a rich, solid, red-brown. The colour of deerskin when it's dipped in water, a wet sort of darkness that fades away in the sun. The moment you tangle your fingers in that colour you think of wood – and yet not wood entirely, because if you breathe it as well it is not the sweet scent of timber but an earthier one, the scent of blood and sinew and bone.

It is the scent – the colour – of movement, of yearning for greater things. Of heavy, leafed branches stretching out to a sky.

A shadow stirs behind him. I catch a glimpse of a dog.

And then he steps into a ring of light – reluctantly; I see it in his sudden spike of grey – and as he steps up to the front of Sasuke Uchiha's house I catch the twin red scars slashing down his cheeks.

I gasp. The dog turns its great brown head.

So does the boy.

And it is only then that I realise that I'm standing by my car, the dandelions behind me, staring out across the road. Above me the night starts up restless and snarling. The weight of two sets of dark brown eyes settles onto my shoulders, makes my body waver. Cast within them I feel myself weak and confused.

Lightning comes a sudden white fork in the darkness.

The storm breaks.

* * *

Sasuke

(_"Sasuke?"_

_I turn. I smile. "Itachi?"_

"_I'm sorry."_

"_I know," I say. "I know."_)

* * *

_Between the desire_

_And the spasm_

_Between the potency_

_And the existence_

_Between the essence_

_And the descent_

_Falls the Shadow_

(T.S. Eliot: _The Hollow Men_)

* * *

**A/N: Okay, first things first:**

**If you didn't understand that little exchange between Temari and Gaara, don't worry, it'll make itself clear later. Mwahaha. I love tossing in these little... distracters? No, they're not really distracters, they do actually serve a purpose in terms of themes and whatnot, but... well, they're not really there for the main plot. Did that make any sense? Probably not. I very rarely make sense. O.o**

**And yes, I am intending... to bring in Itachi... sometime soon...**

**No SasuNaru in this Chapter (or GaaNaru either, which I'm sure some will see as a good thing – and no, I'm not planning to have GaaNaru in this Fic as a major pairing anyway, so don't get worried) – but there will be. In the next Chapter.**

**How will it happen?**

**Guess you'll have to read to find out... (When I find the time to post it, that is. Haha. And yes, my new One-Shot for reaching 300 reviews will be coming out of the works soon as well!)**

**In the meantime, REVIEWWWWW! :P**


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